{"id":22645,"date":"2026-08-23T18:52:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/blog\/canada-security-screening-volume-trend\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T19:00:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:30:25","slug":"canada-security-screening-volume-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/blog\/canada-security-screening-volume-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"Security screening referrals peaked in 2019, not 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The common claim is that Canadian security screening gets heavier every year. IRCC&#8217;s own data does not support that. The real picture is more complicated, and ultimately more encouraging.<\/p>\n<h2>Seven years at a glance<\/h2>\n<p>Total applications referred to security screening, permanent and temporary residence combined:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2019: <strong>68,515<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2020: <strong>18,680<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2021: <strong>23,190<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2022: <strong>34,250<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2023: <strong>61,320<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2024: <strong>63,560<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>2025 (Jan\u2013Jul): <strong>27,565<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Point one: 2019 is the peak, not 2024<\/h2>\n<p>This is the finding that gets lost in public discussion. The highest referral volume in the entire period is <strong>2019<\/strong> \u2014 before COVID.<\/p>\n<p>The 2020 collapse to 18,680 reflects closed offices and halted international travel, not a policy change. What followed from 2021 onward is largely a <strong>return to normal<\/strong>, not a new wave of scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>Even at the top of that recovery \u2014 2024, at 63,560 \u2014 referrals remain <strong>below the 2019 level<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>Point two: 2025 is falling<\/h2>\n<p>Referrals in the first seven months of 2025 total 27,565. At that pace the full year lands near <strong>47,250<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>That is a decline of roughly <strong>26%<\/strong> against 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The drop is consistent with Canada&#8217;s broader 2025 posture: lower admissions targets, tightened intake across several programs, and smaller overall application volumes. Fewer referrals is, first of all, a reflection of fewer applications.<\/p>\n<h2>Point three: temporary residence dominates<\/h2>\n<p>Of the 68,515 referrals in 2019:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Temporary residence: <strong>47,945<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Permanent residence: <strong>20,570<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That ratio holds roughly steady in later years. Most security screening is performed on temporary applications \u2014 visitor, study and work \u2014 not on permanent residence files.<\/p>\n<p>For applicants who assume screening is reserved for major immigration applications, this is a useful correction: a visitor visa application can enter the same queue.<\/p>\n<h2>So why do the waits feel worse?<\/h2>\n<p>If referral volumes sit below 2019, why has the applicant experience deteriorated?<\/p>\n<p>This dataset does not answer that directly, but it makes two things clear:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The distribution by nationality is not uniform.<\/strong> A global decline is not a decline for everyone. Iranian referrals more than doubled between 2022 and 2023 and held there through 2024, while world totals were merely recovering.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Intake volume is not processing capacity.<\/strong> Referral counts say nothing about the resources available to clear them. Files accumulated in earlier years are still in the queue.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The takeaway<\/h2>\n<p>The &#8220;unprecedented wave of security screening&#8221; framing does not survive contact with the data. What actually happened was a pandemic collapse, a recovery to pre-2020 levels, and a decline in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>That general picture offers little comfort to Iranian applicants, whose share moved against the global trend over exactly the same period.<\/p>\n<h2>Source<\/h2>\n<p>Figures from IRCC records released under the Access to Information Act, pages 000127\u2013000146, compiled by OPP-DART-2025-34337, covering 1 January 2019 to 31 July 2025. Values between 0 and 5 are suppressed and all others rounded to the nearest multiple of 5. The annualised 2025 figure is our calculation, not an IRCC figure.<\/p>\n<p><!-- av-related --><\/p>\n<h2>Related reading<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/blog\/iran-security-screening-canada-data\/\">Iran leads the world in Canada&#8217;s security screening referrals<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/blog\/security-screening-failure-rate-canada\/\">How often does Canadian security screening actually fail an applicant?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/blog\/canada-security-screening-explained\/\">What Canadian security screening actually is<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The common claim is that Canadian security screening gets heavier every year. IRCC&#8217;s own data does not support that. The real picture is more complicated, and ultimately more encouraging. Seven years at a glance Total applications referred to security screening, permanent and temporary residence combined: 2019: 68,515 2020: 18,680 2021: 23,190 2022: 34,250 2023: 61,320 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-immigration-to-canada-en","category-immigration-to-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22705,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22645\/revisions\/22705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalvisa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}