How long do you have to restore your status in Canada?

90 days from the day you lost temporary resident status, under section 182 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. The clock runs from the loss of status, not from when you noticed it, and not from when you started gathering documents. After 90 days restoration is no longer available and the remaining option is to leave Canada.

Can you work or study while your restoration application is being processed?

No. This is the difference that catches people. Maintained status, which you get by applying before your permit expires, lets you carry on under your existing conditions. Restoration applies after your permit has already expired and authorises nothing while you wait. IRCC's position is that you must immediately stop working or studying the moment your authorisation ends. Continuing is unauthorised work or study, and it goes on the same file the officer is about to assess.

Can a student who stopped attending classes restore their status?

Not as a student. Section 182(2) says an officer shall not restore the status of a student who failed to comply with the conditions in section 220.1(1) — which are to enrol at the designated learning institution named on the permit and remain enrolled, and to actively pursue the course of study. That is a mandatory bar, not a discretionary one. It is also the cruel part of this rule: the most common reason a student loses status is the exact reason that stops them getting it back in the same category.

What changed for restoration on 1 May 2026?

Until then, an out-of-status worker or student could generally only restore in the category they already held, so somebody with no route to a new permit had to leave Canada and return as a visitor. From 1 May 2026, updated instructions to officers allow workers and students to apply to restore their status as visitors without leaving the country, still within the same 90 days. It does not change the ban on working or studying while you wait — it only expands which status you can ask to be restored to.

Is restoration guaranteed if you apply within 90 days?

No. The regulation says an officer shall restore status if you meet the initial requirements for your stay, have not failed to comply with other conditions imposed on you, and are not subject to a declaration under subsection 22.1(1) of the Act. Those conditions do real work, and in practice restoration is treated as discretionary. A record of non-compliance counts against you.

8 August 2026 · 8 min read

Out of status in Canada: the 90 days, and the rule that shuts the door on students

Q: Does being out of status affect future applications?

It can, even if your restoration is approved. The period out of status becomes part of your immigration history, and later applications are assessed on your whole file. That is a reason to act inside the 90 days rather than a reason to hide the gap — an unexplained period is worse than a documented one.

You have 90 days to apply, you may not work or study while you wait, and section 182(2) bars an officer from restoring a student who stopped attending. Plus the change on 1 May 2026 that opened a door which did not exist before.

If your permit has already expired, start here

Two sentences, before any explanation.

You have 90 days from the day you lost status to apply for restoration. From the moment your permit expired, you are not allowed to work or study, and that applies while your restoration application is being processed.

If you are currently working or attending classes on an expired permit, that is the thing to deal with today, ahead of everything else on this page.

Three states, and the line between them

Almost everything that goes wrong here comes from treating these as versions of the same thing. They are not.

	When it applies	Can you keep working or studying?
Maintained status	You applied for a new permit before the current one expired	Yes — under your existing conditions, while the decision is pending
Restoration	Your permit has already expired, and you apply within 90 days	No — nothing is authorised while you wait
Neither	More than 90 days have passed	No, and restoration is no longer available

The line between the first two rows is a single date: whether your application reached IRCC before your permit expired. One day either side of it produces completely different outcomes, and no officer can move it.

This is why the most valuable thing on this whole subject is boring: find your expiry date and file before it. Everything below is what happens when that did not happen.

What restoration is, in the regulation's own words

Section 182(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations says that within 90 days after losing temporary resident status, a visitor, worker or student may apply to have it restored. An officer shall restore that status if the person:

meets the initial requirements for their stay
has not failed to comply with any other conditions imposed, and
is not the subject of a declaration under subsection 22.1(1) of the Act

It applies where status was lost by failing to comply with the conditions in section 185 — the period authorised for your stay, or conditions on the type of work, the employer or the location of work, or on your studies.

"Shall restore" reads like a guarantee, and it is not one. The three conditions attached to it do the real work, and the middle one is broad: any other condition you failed to comply with can defeat the application. In practice restoration is treated as discretionary, and a history of non-compliance counts against you.

The bar that stops most students

Here is the part that is missing from nearly every page on this topic, and it is the most important thing on this one.

Section 182(2): an officer shall not restore the status of a student who failed to comply with a condition set out in section 220.1(1).

Section 220.1(1) sets two conditions on every study permit holder:

Enrol at the designated learning institution named on your permit, and remain enrolled there until you complete your studies.
Actively pursue your course or programme of study.

Read those two conditions against the reasons students actually lose status: they stopped attending, they dropped to a load that is not active pursuit, they left one institution before starting at another, they took a break nobody authorised.

Those are breaches of 220.1(1). And section 182(2) does not say an officer may refuse. It says shall not restore.

So the most common reason a student loses status is the exact reason that bars them from getting it back as a student. That is a closed door, not a difficult one, and anybody telling you it can be argued around is describing a discretion the regulation removes.

This is also why the compliance rules matter more than they look while you are still studying. The breach and the bar are one fact seen from two ends, and the conditions that trigger it — hours, enrolment, leave, changing institution — are set out in working while studying in Canada.

By contrast, somebody whose permit simply ran out while they were enrolled and attending has not breached 220.1(1) at all. They are in the ordinary restoration route under 182(1). The difference between those two people is enormous, and from the outside their situations look identical.

What changed on 1 May 2026

This is recent, it is genuinely good news, and it has barely been written up.

Before: an out-of-status worker or student could generally only apply to restore the status they already held. If you had no route to a new work or study permit — which is exactly the position of a student caught by the 182(2) bar — restoration was not much use, and the practical answer was to leave Canada and come back as a visitor.

From 1 May 2026: updated instructions to officers allow workers and students who lose status to apply to restore their status as visitors, without leaving Canada. Still within the same 90 days.

Be precise about what that does and does not do:

It expands which status you can ask to be restored to. That is the whole change.
It does not extend the 90 days.
It does not let you work or study while you wait. IRCC's instructions are explicit that you must stop immediately on losing authorisation.
It does not make restoration automatic. It remains discretionary.
You must remain in Canada until a decision is made, and meet the requirements to be a visitor.

For somebody barred under 182(2), this is the difference between a door and a wall. Visitor status is not a solution to anything by itself — but it is legal status in Canada while you work out what is, and until this year that was not available without a flight.

The costs, and why we are not printing a number

The fee is the restoration fee plus the fee for the permit you are asking for.

We are not quoting the amount, because the figures in circulation disagree with each other. IRCC changed its fee structure in December 2025, and pages still quoting the old $200 restoration fee have not been updated. Several sites currently list amounts that differ from one another by more than $20.

This is exactly the kind of number where being approximately right is worse than sending you to the source. Take the current fee from IRCC's own fee list on the day you apply.

What it leaves on your record

Restoration fixes your status. It does not erase the gap.

The period you spent out of status becomes part of your immigration history, and future applications are assessed on your whole file. That is true even when restoration is granted.

Read that as a reason to act inside the 90 days rather than a reason to hide anything. A documented gap that you corrected promptly reads very differently from an unexplained one, and from a period where you kept working through it.

The order to do things in

Establish the date you lost status. Everything is measured from it, and the 90 days do not pause while you research.
Stop working and stop studying, if you have not already. This is the one item on the list you can do in the next five minutes, and it is the one that affects your file most.
Work out whether 182(2) applies to you — that is, whether you breached the enrolment or active-pursuit conditions, or simply ran out of time while complying with them. The two situations lead to different places.
Get licensed advice, this week. Not after more reading. See below.
Do not leave Canada assuming you can sort it out from outside without being told that is the right move. Since 1 May 2026 there is an in-Canada option that did not exist before, and leaving voids a pending restoration application entirely — you cannot return to resume it. If leaving is genuinely the right call, the difference between going on your own terms and going on an order is set out in when leaving Canada is the better move.

Where we stop, and we mean it here

Everything above is the published text of sections 182, 185 and 220.1 of the regulations, and IRCC's own dated instructions. Reporting that is fine.

Working out which of these applies to you is not, and this is the page where that matters most. Whether your circumstances breached 220.1(1), whether restoration is realistic, what to do about work you have already done on an expired permit — under Canadian law that is regulated advice, and it may only be given by a Canadian lawyer, a Quebec notary, or a member of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants.

If you are inside the 90 days, that call is worth making today. The window is the only part of this that cannot be recovered, and the free half-hour that tells you which of the two situations you are in is the most valuable half-hour available to you right now.

And the part that is ours

Once your status question has an answer, if returning to study is part of it, that is the piece we can help with — which programmes you actually qualify for, what each genuinely costs, how long it runs, and whether it carries a post-graduation work permit. Free, no agent fee to us, and cashback on your college fees on every programme.

Two things worth reading alongside this one. If your permit has not expired yet but is about to, and your points are not reaching, the routes still open to you are in PGWP expiring and CRS score not enough. And if a second credential is on your list, cost it in points before you commit — we did the arithmetic in second diploma, or another year of work?.

See what is open to you in Canada

The 90-day restoration window and its conditions are section 182 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations; the mandatory bar on restoring a student who breached enrolment or active pursuit is section 182(2) read with section 220.1(1); the conditions that can be imposed on temporary residents are section 185. The extension of restoration to visitor status for out-of-status workers and students, without leaving Canada, comes from instructions to officers updated on 1 May 2026 and does not change the 90-day window or the prohibition on working and studying while a decision is pending. IRCC changed its fee structure in December 2025; take the current amount from IRCC's own fee list rather than from any article. Checked 8 August 2026. Regulations and operational instructions change without notice. Nothing here is advice about your own status, and nothing here predicts an outcome.