A Federal Court judge has dismissed a Start-Up Visa (SUV) applicant’s bid to force Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to finalize his permanent residence application, ruling that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration’s decision to suspend a designated entity eliminates any legal obligation to process linked files.
The decision in Zheng v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 245, delivered on February 20, marks the first judicial interpretation of the suspension power under subsection 98.03(4) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR).
The case centers on the Manitoba Technology Accelerator (MTA), a Winnipeg-based, not-for-profit business incubator that operated as a designated entity under the SUV program.
Designated entities assess foreign entrepreneurs’ business proposals and issue Commitment Certificates, the documents IRCC requires before it will process an SUV permanent residence application.
MTA, which rebranded to Manitoba Innovates in March 2025, held that gatekeeping role for an unknown number of SUV applicants.
In December 2025, the Minister suspended MTA’s designation and froze all applications tied to its commitment certificates. The Zheng ruling now confirms that courts will not intervene to override that freeze.
Five Years in the Queue
Lifu Zheng applied for permanent residence through the SUV program in February 2021, with a Commitment Certificate from MTA (then operating under its legal name, Biomedical Commercialization Canada Inc.). By July 2023, he had cleared eligibility, medical, and criminality assessments.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) received his screening request in August 2023 and delivered its advice on October 1, 2025, confirming to the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) that its role was finished. After 46 months of waiting, Zheng appeared to be near the finish line.
The Freeze
On December 19, 2025, the Minister invoked paragraph 98.03(4)(a) of the IRPR to suspend MTA’s ability to make commitments.
Alongside that action, paragraph 98.03(4)(b) triggered a processing freeze: IRCC would not consider any SUV permanent residence applications supported by MTA’s commitment certificates for the duration, with a narrow exception for in-Canada work permit renewals. The freeze runs for nine months, until September 19, 2026.
IRCC notified Zheng on January 12, 2026. The department has not disclosed why it suspended MTA, but the statutory trigger under subsection 98.03(3) requires reason to suspect that an entity either failed to meet program conditions or submitted false, misleading, or inaccurate information.
Zheng had filed his mandamus application in January 2025, months before the freeze, and CSIS had already finished its screening. By the time his case reached a hearing on February 9, 2026, the legal ground had shifted beneath him.
A Broad Reading of the Minister’s Power
The freeze eliminated the first requirement for mandamus: a public legal duty to act, Justice Turley found. Without that duty, the remaining elements of the legal test did not need to be considered.
Zheng argued that paragraph 98.03(4)(b) should not apply to his case because MTA had already issued his Commitment Certificate and IRCC had already determined his eligibility. Justice Turley rejected this reading.
The provision authorizes the Minister to refuse to consider applications “associated with commitments made by” a suspended entity.
That language, the court found, plainly covers files where the certificate exists but IRCC has not yet rendered a final decision.
Zheng also pointed to his completed CSIS screening as evidence that his file was functionally ready for approval. The court drew a distinction between CSIS finishing its advisory role and the overall security process reaching completion.
In permanent residence cases, CSIS provides its advice to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which then forwards both CSIS’s assessment and CBSA’s own recommendation to IRCC for a final determination. No evidence showed that CBSA had completed this handoff.
Justice Turley cited Niu v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 520, for the principle that courts assess mandamus entitlement at the time of hearing, not at filing. The MTA freeze, though imposed after Zheng launched his lawsuit, retroactively eliminated his path to relief.
First Precedent on Entity Suspensions
No prior Federal Court decision had interpreted the Minister’s power under subsection 98.03(4) of the IRPR. To fill the gap, Justice Turley drew an analogy to section 13.1 of the Citizenship Act, which allows the Minister to pause a citizenship application while an admissibility investigation is underway.
Courts have consistently held that a reasonable pause under that provision removes the obligation to finalize the file.
The parallel is instructive but imperfect. Section 13.1 of the Citizenship Act permits a pause “for as long as is necessary,” with no fixed time limit. Subsection 98.03(4) of the IRPR, by contrast, caps the window at nine months under subsection 98.03(5).
Once that period closes, either because the situation is resolved or the clock runs out, processing obligations presumably resume.
Christopher Lennon, President and General Counsel at Empowered Startups, a competing designated entity, sees the practical implications as clear. “Nothing has really changed as the Federal Court has only confirmed what IRCC already stated at the time of announcing the MTA suspension,” he told IMI.
Lennon’s outlook for affected applicants is blunt: “Practically speaking, I think we can assume this means they will likely never be processed unless they are eventually refused or otherwise cleared from the processing queue.” If that assessment holds, the freeze functions less as a temporary hold and more as a quiet prelude to refusal.
What Happens After September
MTA’s freeze is set to expire on September 19, 2026, unless the situation is “resolved” earlier under subsection 98.03(5) of the IRPR. What follows is an open question.
If IRCC lifts the freeze and resumes processing, affected applications re-enter a queue where the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan targets just 500 annual SUV admissions, with a possible range of 250 to 1,000. If IRCC instead moves to refuse applications outright, as the regulation permits, those files could exit the approximately 43,200-case backlog without ever reaching a decision on the merits.
The government has not signaled either direction. IRCC told affected applicants in January that it would resume processing after the freeze ends, subject to standard procedures and available admission spaces. That phrasing leaves considerable room for interpretation.
The Zheng ruling does not dictate any particular outcome, but it does close the courthouse door for SUV applicants whose designated entities face suspension. For anyone holding a commitment certificate from MTA, the options are to wait, to explore alternative pathways to Canadian permanent residence, or both.
How many applicants find themselves in that position remains unknown. IRCC has not disclosed how many SUV files are tied to MTA. That figure, when it surfaces, will determine whether this case is a footnote or a chapter in the SUV’s final act.
