Start-Up Visa (SUV) applicants whose files cleared every check years ago now have a ruling to take to court. A Federal Court judge has held that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) cannot excuse open-ended delay by pointing to the Ministerial Instructions (MIs) that caused it.
Justice Michael Battista gave IRCC 90 days to decide an application filed in March 2021. His judgment in Naghavi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 1370, dated November 9, found the instructions had been “the perpetrators rather than the justification for open-ended delay.”
About 43,000 SUV applications were pending as of September 2025, according to IRCC’s evidence in an earlier case. The program stopped taking new ones at the end of that year. Rulings for IRCC in two similar cases this year leave the Federal Court split on the question.
Stalled files
Naghavi applied with a commitment from Biomedical Commercialization Canada Inc., which operates as the Manitoba Technology Accelerator. Notes in IRCC’s Global Case Management System (GCMS) show the file was ready for finalization in June 2024, after an officer found him eligible and admissible.
Two sets of MIs then moved other applicants ahead of him. The April 2024 instructions capped certain new applications and gave priority to files from designated entities that had made minimum financial commitments. A second set, issued in December 2025, added another priority group: Teams with at least one member holding an SUV work permit.
Both sets applied retroactively, and Naghavi met neither set of criteria. In September 2026, IRCC estimated 31 more months of processing, a figure its own evidence conceded left out the effect of the December 2025 instructions.
Battista put the delay at 67 months and expected the total processing time to “approach a decade.” Files with the same profile, a finished assessment and no credible end date, are the ones the ruling reaches most directly.
Open-ended delay
Successive instructions are within the Minister’s power, Battista accepted, and MIs can, in principle, justify delay. Under the Federal Court of Appeal’s 2026 ruling in Benison, however, that holds only for instructions made in good faith. They must also fit the aims of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
IRCC’s case failed on the missing end date. Two rounds of instructions had pushed Naghavi back, and the department could offer no realistic estimate of when it would finish.
Borrowing the appeal court’s question, Battista asked what would stop further MIs from justifying further delay. Accepting the cause of open-ended delay as its justification, he wrote, amounts to circular reasoning.
He also rejected IRCC’s warning that a ruling for Naghavi would entitle every SUV applicant to mandamus, a court order that compels an official to perform a legal duty. Each request turns on its own facts, Battista wrote, and the Minister may succeed in a future case with stronger justification.
The judgment builds on his July ruling in Dai v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 931, a caregiver case. There, Battista held that MIs which scrap processing rules without replacing them cannot justify delay.
“Not an Unlimited Legal Shield“
For Slava Apel, CEO of Startup Visa Services, the ruling shows that IRCC’s processing priorities “are not an unlimited legal shield.” A minister can choose which files go first, in Apel’s view, but that power “does not necessarily permit endless delays for everyone else.”
Apel stresses that the judgment “does not say that IRCC must approve old SUV applications.” Mandamus compels a decision, and a decision can be a refusal. The government, he argues, “cannot automatically justify an unreasonable, indefinite delay simply by pointing to the very rules it created that are causing the delay.”
He expects mandamus to become “more attractive for certain older SUV files,” especially “where GCMS notes show the substantive assessment was completed long ago.” If more applicants with similar facts win, IRCC “could face greater pressure to explain its delays or make decisions,” Apel adds. That, in his words, is “a possible consequence, not something the judgment itself orders.”
Divided bench
In February, Justice Darren Thorne dismissed a similar claim in Yim v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 254. Its applicant had also filed in March 2021 and cleared every assessment, but Thorne held that IRCC had simply not reached the file in a queue the MIs lawfully created.
An order, Thorne wrote, would “circumvent, and indeed repudiate” those priorities. Justice Negar Azmudeh followed Yim in August, dismissing Jin v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 1080, and citing an “increasingly long line” of authority that MIs can justify delay.
Jin’s lawyer made Naghavi’s argument: The instructions could not license “potentially indefinite delay” for files outside the priority groups. Azmudeh found the deprioritization was “neither an indefinite delay” nor a release from IRCC’s duty to decide.
The two judges also read Benison differently. In her reading, the appeal court had set the immigration context apart, while Battista applied its warning against open-ended delay directly. He distinguished Jin as a case that focused on the validity of the MIs, and did not cite Yim.
Facts differed too. Jin’s own security screening had been pending since January 2024, and the Minister suspended his designated entity in December 2025, freezing his file. That entity was Biomedical Commercialization Canada, the same incubator that backed Naghavi.
The parties in Jin agreed the suspension would end by September 19, 2026, more than six weeks before Naghavi’s November 4 hearing. Battista’s ruling does not mention it.
Federal Court judges do not strictly bind one another, so Yim and Jin remain good law. By treating Jin as a different kind of case rather than a wrong one, though, Battista made it easier for colleagues to follow him on similar facts.
Path to appeal
Under the IRPA, an appeal from a Federal Court immigration judgment generally requires that the judge certify a serious question of general importance. None of the three judges did. Faced with conflicting rulings, a future judge could certify one, putting the issue before the Federal Court of Appeal.
The ruling also shows IRCC how to win the next case. Battista’s objection centered on the missing estimate, so credible completion dates for non-priority files could weaken the Naghavi argument.
Even the governing framework may shift. According to Jin, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to appeal Benison on July 23, 2026. Both Battista and Azmudeh grounded their rulings partly in their readings of that decision.
Backlog math
IRCC’s evidence in Yim also says the MIs limit admissions under the SUV and Self-Employed Persons programs to 500 people a year. A court order can move one file forward without changing that number.
Ottawa has other levers too. Bill C-12, which received royal assent on March 26, 2026, lets the federal cabinet cancel or suspend the processing of groups of applications in the public interest. Grounds listed by IRCC include fraud, administrative errors, and concerns about public health, safety, or national security.
Canada has cleared an investment migration backlog by statute before. In 2014, legislation terminated federal Immigrant Investor Program and Entrepreneur Program applications that lacked a selection decision before February 11 of that year. The duty Battista enforced applies, in his words, “as long as the Minister chooses to keep applications in a processing queue.”
IMI program guide: Canada Startup Visa
