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Federal immigration officials have begun sending warning letters to asylum seekers across Canada, informing them they may no longer qualify for a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board under the one-year filing deadline introduced by Bill C-12, which became law on March 26.

Mohammad Al Hindi, a Gaza refugee living in Canada, is among those who received a letter, CTV News reported. His claim was already in the system before the law existed.

The deadline has dominated coverage. But the law does more than set a timer on asylum claims. It gives the federal government new powers to cancel immigration documents in bulk, halt application processing for entire categories, and share claimants’ personal information across government departments. Those provisions have drawn less public scrutiny, even though they may affect a wider population than the asylum deadline alone.

Bill C-12 received royal assent on March 26, 2026. But the government says its new asylum eligibility rules apply to claims filed on or after June 3, 2025, nearly ten months before the law existed.

That means people who filed asylum claims between June 2025 and March 2026 were operating under one set of rules and are now being judged under another. A claimant who filed seven months ago may now learn by letter that no hearing is coming.

Under the new law, any asylum claim made more than one year after a person's first entry into Canada after June 24, 2020, will not be referred to the IRB. A separate rule blocks IRB referral for people who crossed between ports of entry along the Canada-US land border and waited more than 14 days to file.

The June 24, 2020 cutoff date does not just capture recent arrivals. It sweeps in anyone who entered Canada at any point over the past six years and has not yet had their claim resolved.

The government says people blocked from the IRB can still apply for a pre-removal risk assessment, or PRRA, a review meant to prevent deportation to countries where claimants face persecution or torture.

But the two processes are not equivalent, and the differences affect how claims are heard.

An IRB hearing is an oral proceeding before an independent tribunal. Claimants can present testimony, call witnesses, respond to questions, and have a lawyer argue their case in real time. The PRRA is primarily a paper-based review. The Canadian Council for Refugees' brief to Parliament said PRRA does not guarantee an oral hearing and lacks the procedural protections the IRB provides.

For someone whose claim depends on credibility, on explaining why they fled, or on describing persecution that is difficult to document, the difference between speaking to a decision-maker and submitting paperwork can determine the outcome. The council called the PRRA process “wholly inadequate'“ as a substitute.

The council also argued that the one-year deadline fails to reflect how protection needs evolve. Survivors of gender-based violence, LGBTQIA+ individuals, unaccompanied minors, and people from countries where political conditions shift may not recognize or be able to articulate their need for asylum within 12 months of arrival.

But Bill C-12 contains a second set of provisions that operate on a different scale.

The law gives the Governor in Council authority to stop accepting certain immigration applications for processing, suspend or terminate processing of applications already submitted, cancel or vary immigration documents, and impose or change conditions on those documents. The threshold for using these powers is broad: the government says they can be invoked when it is considered in the public interest, including in response to administrative errors, fraud, public health, public safety, or national security.

The powers apply to whole categories of applications or documents at once. A single order could, in theory, freeze processing for an entire class of applicants or revoke documents already issued to a group.

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said in a statement that the law strengthens “the practical tools that keep our immigration and asylum systems fair, efficient and working as intended,“ Al Jazeera reported.

Bill C-12 also creates legal authority for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to share personal information within the department and with other government partners through written information-sharing agreements. The law permits sharing of identity data, immigration status, and IRCC-issued documents with federal, provincial, and territorial bodies. It also allows regulations to be developed for sharing client information across federal departments and agencies.

People fleeing persecution by a state may have reason to fear that their personal data, once shared across multiple government departments, could eventually be accessible in ways that compromise their safety. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association called Bill C-12 “an attack on refugee and migrant rights” and cited the information-sharing provisions as part of a pattern of expanded executive power with insufficient safeguards.

The government says the sharing is meant to improve service delivery and coordination.

More than two dozen organizations, including Amnesty International Canada and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, signed a joint statement saying the law “will put thousands of individuals at risk of persecution, violence and precarity.”

The Canadian Council for Refugees went further in its parliamentary brief, arguing that the new ineligibility provisions prevent people from accessing an oral hearing before the IRB, which it described as a right guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If that argument holds, it could form the basis of a constitutional challenge.

No court challenge has been publicly announced. But the combination of retroactive application, reduced procedural protections, and broad discretionary powers gives litigators several potential entry points.

IRCC has not disclosed how many warning letters have been sent.