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OTTAWA — The federal government has hit pause on a popular immigration program that allows people to sponsor their parents or grandparents to come to Canada.

The parents and grandparents program normally opens for applications once a year, and often in January.

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But Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has given notice that the application process for 2020 is being postponed.

“These instructions will allow the Department sufficient time to complete the development of a new application intake management process for the parents and grandparents sponsorship program, to be implemented in 2020,” he wrote in a set of instructions published Dec. 20, and circulated by his department to the public this week.

The application process for the wildly popular program has been reworked several times in recent years following criticism and problems with the system.

Applications used to be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis in person, but that system was scrapped after people effectively bought their way to the front of the line by hiring couriers to ensure their forms were at the top of the pile.