Canada: Immigration Publishes First-Ever AI Strategy for Immigration Processing
March 12, 2026
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has released its first AI strategy, outlining how the department plans to integrate artificial intelligence into its operations. The strategy establishes guiding principles focused on human-centered oversight, transparency, fairness, security, and reliability, and introduces a framework for categorizing AI use cases as “everyday,” “program,” or “experimental.” IRCC indicates that AI may be used to streamline administrative tasks, support data analysis, enhance fraud detection, and help triage low-risk applications for expedited review. However, the department emphasizes that final decisions, including refusals, will continue to be made by human officers and that AI systems will not operate autonomously. The strategy also contemplates experimental applications, such as modelling immigration flows and forecasting economic impacts, while confirming that fully autonomous AI decision-making is not being adopted.
This alert is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions, please contact the global immigration professional with whom you work at Fragomen.
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