Conditions for legal persons

You must honour all the conditions required. Otherwise, you could receive an adverse decision upon review of your application.

You must first determine the class in which your organization is found according to the conditions associated with each of them:

• Regular legal person (Class R); or
• Experienced legal person (Class E).

To be a regular organization, you must honour all the general conditions.

To be an experienced organization, you must honour all the general conditions and 3 additional conditions.

Once you have determined your organization's category (R or E), verify if it is part of a specific subclass.

Your organization must demonstrate that it complies with the following conditions:

1- Be legally constituted

Your organization must be constituted under one of the following Acts:

• Part III of the Companies Act ;
• the Religious Corporations Act;
• the Roman Catholic Bishops Act;
• the Act respecting fabriques;
• the Professional Syndicates Act;

or

Constituted as a non-profit corporation, under a statute of Canada or another province, if your organization carries on its activities in Québec an is registered in accordance with the Act respecting the legal publicity of enterprises.

2- Have carried on its activities for at least 2 years

3- Not be a political party

Your organization may not be a political party or a party authority within the meaning of Chapter I of Title III of the Election Act.

4- Have honoured its financial obligations

If your organization previously made undertakings concerning refugees, it must have honoured its financial obligations or, if applicable, have repaid to the Gouvernement du Québec or the government of another province any sum that was disbursed to them as last resort financial assistance (social assistance or financial assistance as part of a program from the ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration (MIFI)).

5- Demonstrate its financial capacity

Your organization must demonstrate that it has and will continue to have sufficient financial resources to honour its undertaking.

6- Have registered charitable status (only for applications submitted after August 17, 2022) 

To submit a new application as of August 17, 2022, your organization must be registered as a charity  with the Canada Revenue Agency. 

7- Comply with the conditions that apply to each officer, representative and member of its board of directors 

As of August 17, 2022, the following conditions apply to your organization’s officers, representatives (spokespersons) and board members, including those who have an application in progress with the Ministry): 

• Not be under a Government of Canada deportation order or be detained in a penitentiary or a prison; 
• Not be the subject of citizenship revocation proceedings; 
• Not have been convicted, in Canada or abroad, of murder or an offence under Schedule I or II of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act . 

If that is the case, the officer, representative or board member of your organization must have been discharged, rehabilitated (criminal record suspension) or have completed serving their sentence for at least 5 years prior to submitting your application. 

Your organization can be considered experienced if it complies with the 3 conditions of this class.

If one of these conditions is not honoured, it will be considered a regular organization (Class R).

The 3 conditions to be honoured are as follows:

1- Sponsorship experience

Your organization must have 10 years or more of sponsorship experience in Québec over a period of 15 years before reapplying, acquired between November 1, 2006 and November 1, 2021.

The sponsorship experience is acquired from the time the persons you sponsored arrived in Québec, by the fact of:

• Meeting their basic needs;
• Providing them with welcoming and integration services.

2- Minimum number of undertaking applications

Your organization must have submitted the minimum number of applications set in the previous application intake period during which you could apply. 

For the 2022-2023 period, the minimum number of undertaking applications to be submitted by the sponsor was zero and therefore your organization is not required to have submitted any applications for this period. 

3- Nationality of the sponsored persons

Your organization must have made undertakings regarding persons of at least 3 different nationalities during the 3 years preceding the submission of a new application.

Your organization could be part of a subclass of legal persons

If you honour all the conditions of your class of legal person (regular or experienced), you may be regarded as:

• Specific regular legal persons (subclass RS); or
• Specific experienced legal persons (subclass ES):

For this purpose, you must apply to sponsor exclusively persons who will settle outside the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) .If one of the people you wish to sponsor settles in a municipality that is part of the CMM, your organization may not be part of subclasses ES or RS.