OTTAWA — A Federal Court judge has ruled that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada cannot excuse indefinite processing delays by citing the ministerial instructions that caused them. Justice Michael Battista gave the department 90 days to decide on a Start-Up Visa application from March 2021. He found the instructions acted as "the perpetrators rather than the justification for open-ended delay." This creates a split on the court, as two other judges dismissed similar claims this year. About 43,000 SUV applications were pending as of September 2025.
The applicant in the case had his file ready for finalization in June 2024 after being found eligible. Two sets of ministerial instructions then moved other applicants ahead of him. One set prioritized files from designated entities with minimum financial commitments, while another favoured teams with a member holding an SUV work permit. Neither set applied to this applicant, yet they were applied retroactively to his file. IRCC later estimated his processing would take 31 more months, a figure that did not account for the effect of the second set of instructions.
Battista calculated the delay at 67 months and said total processing could "approach a decade." He wrote that accepting the cause of an open-ended delay as its justification was circular reasoning. The judge rejected IRCC's argument that a ruling for the applicant would entitle every SUV applicant to a mandamus order. He said each request depends on its own facts, and the minister could succeed in a future case with stronger justification.
Slava Apel, CEO of Startup Visa Services, said the ruling shows IRCC's processing priorities "are not an unlimited legal shield." He said the minister's power to choose which files go first "does not necessarily permit endless delays for everyone else." Apel stressed the judgment "does not say that IRCC must approve old SUV applications," as mandamus compels a decision, which could be a refusal. He expects mandamus to become "more attractive for certain older SUV files," especially where records show the assessment was completed long ago. Earlier this year, Justice Darren Thorne dismissed a similar claim, writing that an order would "circumvent, and indeed repudiate" the lawful priorities set by the instructions. Justice Negar Azmudeh followed that reasoning in August, citing an "increasingly long line" of authority that instructions can justify delay. She found the deprioritization was "neither an indefinite delay" nor a release from IRCC's duty to decide.
Battista distinguished his ruling from the others, noting they focused on the validity of the instructions while his case centred on the lack of an end date. The facts also differed, as the applicant in the earlier case had a pending security screening and his designated entity was suspended. That entity was Biomedical Commercialization Canada, the same incubator involved in Battista's case. Federal Court judges are not strictly bound by each other's rulings, so the conflicting decisions all remain good law.
An appeal of an immigration judgment generally requires a judge to certify a serious question of general importance, which none of the three judges did. A future judge could certify one, sending the issue to the Federal Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court of Canada has also granted leave to appeal the Benison decision, which both Battista and Azmudeh relied on in their rulings. The ministerial instructions limit admissions under the SUV and Self-Employed Persons programs to 500 people per year.