The question every Nigerian family in Canada asks
Your parents are getting older. Maybe Dad's diabetes is harder to manage, or Mum is finding the stairs difficult, and the relatives who used to check on them are busy with their own lives. You're in Canada with work, children and a mortgage, and the natural thought is: bring them here.
Canada has two routes for parents, and in 2026 one of them is closed to new applicants. This page explains both, what they cost, and the other option: care for your parents in their own home in Lagos, run by nurses, with proof every day that it happened.
Parent and grandparent sponsorship: paused for new applicants
Sponsoring a parent for permanent residence goes through the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP). It has never been easy to get into: for years, sponsors submitted an interest form and waited to be randomly invited. The last intake ran in July 2025, when IRCC accepted 10,636 applications from a pool of sponsors created in 2020.
IRCC has now paused new interest to sponsor forms and invitations until further notice. It is still processing applications already in the system and plans to admit up to 15,000 people through the program in 2026. If you weren't already invited, there is currently no way to start a new sponsorship.
The super visa for parents
The super visa is what most families in Canada search for, and it's still open. It lets a parent or grandparent stay for up to five years at a time, with multiple entries over up to ten years, and they can ask to extend while in Canada. To get one:
- you must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and meet a minimum income for your family size, which includes the visiting parents;
- your parent must apply from outside Canada and take an immigration medical exam;
- your parent must have private medical insurance from a Canadian insurer, valid for at least a year from entry, with at least $100,000 of emergency cover for health care, hospital and repatriation. It can be paid in full or in instalments with a deposit.
The insurance is the part families feel most. A super visa holder is a visitor, so they aren't covered by OHIP or any provincial health plan. Insurance for an older parent with high blood pressure, diabetes or a past stroke can cost a lot, and policies may limit or exclude existing conditions. If your parent falls ill, costs above the policy are yours.
Many visitor visa applications are refused, and a super visa is a visitor visa, so the officer still has to be satisfied your parent will leave at the end of their stay.
What your parent gives up by moving
Even when a move is possible, it isn't always what a parent wants. In Canada they would leave their house, their church, their friends and the freedom of going out on their own. Many spend the day indoors while the family is at work or school, and a Canadian winter, with snow and ice for months, makes a fall far more likely and going out much harder. Parents often tell their children, gently, that they would rather stay home.
For you, it usually means becoming their main carer around a full-time job. That is a huge commitment, however much you love them. Care is work, and it is easier to do well when trained people share it.
Bringing them over or care at home in Lagos: side by side
How care at home in Lagos works from Canada
Home Care Nigeria is a nurse-led home care agency in Lagos. We look after your parent the way you would if you lived around the corner: someone they know, at the same time every day, who notices when something isn't right.
- You enquire from Canada. Tell us about your parent on the enquiry form. It takes a few minutes.
- A registered nurse visits your parent at home. They meet your parent and anyone living with them, read the medical notes, and agree safe ranges for readings like blood pressure and sugar. You can join by video call.
- Within 48 hours you get a written care plan and a monthly quote.
- Care starts. A trained caregiver visits daily or lives in. They check in at the home on our app and record the visit as it happens.
- The nurse signs every report before you see it, and you read it on the family portal, with readings, medicines given or refused, meals, mood and anything that worried the caregiver. Urgent concerns reach the nurse and you straight away.
Time zones: the report is there when you wake up
Lagos is on West Africa Time, UTC+1, with no daylight saving. In winter it's 6 hours ahead of Toronto and Ottawa, 7 ahead of Winnipeg, 8 ahead of Calgary and Edmonton, and 9 ahead of Vancouver. In summer it's an hour less. A morning visit in Lagos is usually reported and signed before you wake up, and you can message the nurse in your morning, which is afternoon in Lagos.
Paying from Canada
You pay us directly, by card or bank transfer, and every invoice appears on the family portal next to the visit reports, so you can see exactly what you paid for. Paying the agency directly also means the money for care doesn't pass through a relative. If you send money home for other costs, since 1 May 2026 transfers through licensed money transfer operators are paid out in naira, and the Canadian dollar to naira rate you get depends on the operator. Our guide to making sure money sent home is spent on care explains how families keep it safe.
When you visit
Meet the nurse and the caregiver in person when you come home, or plan the assessment around a trip. You don't have to wait, though: the nurse can do it with you on a video call.
Example: a son in Calgary and his father in Ikeja
This is an illustration of how care works, not a real client. Names and details are invented.
Tunde is an engineer in Calgary. His father, 82, lives in Ikeja with type 2 diabetes and stiff knees. Tunde had registered his interest in sponsoring his parents years ago and was never invited, and the cost of super visa insurance for a man with diabetes, plus the thought of his father on icy pavements, made him think again. His father, in any case, wanted to stay near his church.
Tunde enquired on a Saturday. On Monday a nurse visited his father, with Tunde on a video call at 6am Calgary time, checked his blood sugar records and set safe ranges. The plan put a caregiver with his father every morning: a bath, breakfast, tablets, a sugar check and a slow walk round the compound.
Now Tunde reads the report before his kids are up. When his father's sugar readings crept up over a week, the nurse spotted the pattern, spoke to his doctor, and the caregiver changed his breakfast. Tunde still calls every Sunday, and they talk about football instead of whether he ate.
Questions to ask any agency in Lagos
- Is a registered nurse responsible for my parent, and can I speak to them?
- Will I get a written report after every visit, or only a phone call?
- What checks have the caregivers had: ID, guarantor, references?
- What happens if the caregiver is sick, late or leaves?
- Who acts at night if something goes wrong, and how will I hear about it?
Our guides to signs an elderly parent needs help, hospitals in Lagos for older parents and old people's homes in Lagos go into more detail. See also how care is priced, and our pages for families in the UK and the US.