IRCC IEC Work Permit Eligibility Model — Canada's AI Tool for Youth Mobility

In November 2023 Canada's Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) deployed an AI Work Permit Eligibility Model for the International Experience Canada (IEC) programme, which lets young people from more than 30 partner countries gain work experience in Canada.

To triage routine IEC applications and automatically grant positive eligibility decisions for straightforward cases, while all non-approved applications are still sent to human officers; the model cannot refuse applications.

An Algorithmic Impact Assessment (Level 2, moderate impact) under Canada's Treasury Board Directive on Automated Decision-Making was published on the Open Government Portal together with a peer review and a Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) assessment.

By 2024 IRCC was processing roughly 90,000 IEC applicants per year (up from 67,727 permits issued in 2023), and 2026 reporting indicated processing times had fallen to roughly one-third of pre-automation levels.

Immigration lawyers and advocates have raised concerns that automated eligibility processing could create systemic bias if underlying criteria disproportionately affect certain nationalities or demographics; IRCC's published safeguards (human final authority, GBA+, annual AIA review) aim to mitigate this, but independent external evaluation of outcomes has not yet been published.