Stewart Sharma Harsanyi Immigration Law Firm Blog

The Humanitarian and Compassionate Application: A Powerful Tool for Immigration Relief in Canada

As an immigration lawyer with extensive experience navigating Canada’s complex immigration system, I recently joined Steven Meurrens, Deanna Okun-Nachoff, and Hannah Lindy on the Borderlines podcast (June 13, 2025) to discuss the Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) application under section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). This discretionary remedy remains a cornerstone of Canada’s immigration framework, offering a lifeline to individuals who face barriers to permanent residence due to lack of status or inadmissibility. Below, I explore the H&C application’s significance, drawing on insights from our podcast discussion and my text Inadmissibility and Remedies, while highlighting its enduring power to deliver equitable outcomes. What is an H&C Application? An H&C application allows individuals in Canada (and, in somewhat rare cases, abroad) to seek permanent residence or exemptions from IRPA requirements when they do not qualify under standard streams like family sponsorship or economic classes. As indicated in our text, Inadmissibility and Remedies, “Section 25(1) of the IRPA allows the minister of citizenship and immigration or their delegates the discretion to exempt applicants from most requirements of the Act,” except for inadmissibility due to security, human rights violations, or organized criminality (ss. 34, 35, 37). The Supreme Court’s 2015... Read more →

The Humanitarian and Compassionate Application Discussing the H&C Application -Borderlines Podcast #169

Steven Meurrens: All right. It is June 13th, 2025. We are here today with an all-star panel of H&C experts, Raj Sharma, who was supposed to be on a few weeks ago. We had the episode titled, but then he couldn't make it, and I learned what happens when an episode airs with the title Raj Sharma in it, and he's not there. I get a lot of emails saying, "Where is Raj Sharma? We want Raj." Always a hit on our episodes. We may even bring up, I guess, your past cases because they weren't H&C applications, but they were IAD appeals for Ms. Mohamad. Welcome back. Raj Sharma: It's a pleasure always, and it's been a long time. Although we did meet at the conference... Steven Meurrens: A few times. We did a scavenger hunt. We tried to follow you around. Raj Sharma: I tried to mislead you. Yes. Steven Meurrens: You tried. No, you told us the truth that they weren't going to count something. We didn't believe you, so we went there... Right? We went there and we're like, aha. Raj thought we were going to believe him that this wasn't going to count. Then they... Read more →

Mastering Detention Review Hearings: Insights from the CBA National Immigration Conference

Mastering Detention Review Hearings: Insights from the CBA National Immigration Conference The Canadian Bar Association’s National Immigration Conference was held this year (June 6-7) in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. The first such conference I attended was about 20 years ago, and like every year, the immigration bar comes out in force to gather, network, renew both professional and personal ties and discuss the many pressing issues in the field. As immigration lawyers, we should be used to both tumult and storm but the last year has still been an outlier. I've presented on a number of occasions at past conferences, and this year I had the honor of presenting on detention review hearings alongside a remarkable panel: Ayesha Kumararatne and Prabhpreet Kaur Sangha -both immigration litigators; Alice Tang (Associate Deputy Chairperson of the Immigration Division, Western Region), and Mason Cooke (CBSA Hearings and Appeals). Our session, part of the conference’s popular “Hot Topics” series, offered practical strategies for navigating detention reviews, including a short, mock hearing that brought these tactics to life. In addition to the mock hearing (an examination of a bondsperson) we provided a number of resources; from the three lawyers was our take on Detention Hearing Strategies... Read more →