Provincial attestation letter is now required to study Masters or PhD degree in Canada. IRCC announced in a press note on Sep 19, 2024. Graduate degree international students are no longer exempted from International student caps in Canada.
IRCC announced in press note they will be reducing 10% students from 2024 quota meaning a total 437,000 study permits aiming to approve in 2025 and 2026. To maintain this target the immigration department announce Masters and PhD students will no longer be exempted from the cap limit.
Starting 2025, the Masters and PhD student now require PAL to process their study permit application. Students planning to study in Winter 2025 must have a PAL with their study permit application.
What is PAL?
Provincial attestation letter (PAL) was introduced in early 2024 and it intend to verify the student allocation in province and territories in Canada. This attestation letter confirms the applicant (student) has a place to study in their selected province and the province has issued a certificate that the student eligible to study under the student cap limit allocations.
Province or territory will stop issuing PALs once they reach their highest number of allocations to recruit overseas students in their province.
How Graduate students will affected with new PAL requirements?
Masters and PhD student now required PAL along with their Letter of Accepted from the Designated learning institutes (DLI) to support their student visa in Canada. Experts says this new requirements will turn away many students interested to study in Canada to other destinations. Specially research based Graduate students will seek more easier application and admission process to the other destinations.
While the Canadian government starting to require PAL for graduate students from 1 Nov 2024 many applicants may speed up their visa submission before that day to avoid additional PAL requirements for Canada visa.
IRCC has also placed a strict PGWP policy for foreign students. The policy requires further English/French language proficiency after their graduation for post study work permit in Canada.
How to Apply PAL for Masters or PhD students
Provincial attestation letter application process is pretty straight forward. The student must get a unconditional admission to their DLI and majority of universities provide PAL and apply to their provincial government on behalf of student.
However, the student need to fill out additional PAL forms and pay the appropriate tuition deposit to get a PAL for Masters and PhD (if required by the university).
The common practice for major provinces in Canada are to pay a upfront tuition deposit to confirm their academic placement and then the university start processing the PAL with the provincial government.
How long it takes to get a PAL?
PAL application process is not lengthy but it depends on the volume and accurate informations provided by the student. On average a graduate applicant should get a PAL within 2-4 weeks if they’ve submitted all the requested documents and informations.
However, it may take longer in case by case basis. Usually, in busy Fall session we recommend to apply at least few months ago as Fall and Winter considered the most busiest enrolment session for learning institutes.