Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) Canada

To sponsor relations, you may want to prove that you simply can meet the minimum necessary income requirement, meaning that you should have sufficient income to support yourself and all the people for whom you’ll be financially responsible.

To assess the ability to financially support relations, IRCC uses the Minimum Necessary Income (MNI). The income requirement varies depending on several circumstances based on the number of relations being cared for in Canada, the number of relations being sponsored, and whether the sponsor lives in Canada or Quebec.

What is “Minimum Necessary Income” or MNI?

In order to be considered eligible for any family sponsorship programs, sponsors are required to possess a minimum level of income to support themselves, family members, including those they want to sponsor. Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) use “Minimum Necessary Income” or MNI thresholds to assess the sponsor’s ability to financially support their relations. Family sponsorship applicants will only be considered eligible to sponsor their relations if they will meet the NMI requirements for his or her family size.

Who is Included in The Family Size Unit?

The family size is established on the basis of who is currently being supported by the sponsor in Canada and the people they’re getting to sponsor. To calculate a relative, you’d include:

• Yourself
• your spouse or partner
• your dependent children
• your spouse’s or partner’s dependent children
• every other person you previously sponsored in the past and for whom you’re still financially responsible
• grandparents and parents you would like to sponsor
• spouse of parents and grandparents, partner and dependent children

You must also include dependent children, spouses, partners, and separated spouses who won’t be coming to Canada together with your parents or grandparents.

MNI for Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship

For parent and grandparent sponsorship, the sponsor in Canada will only be eligible if they exceed the MNI for 3 consecutive taxation years (except within the province of Quebec). This requirement ensures that sponsors who bring their parents and grandparents to Canada are ready for the financial responsibility that always comes with caring for elderly relations.

Sponsors under the Parent and Grandparent Sponsorship must meet the Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) outlined within the chart below. The table below shows the MNI figures are Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) figures, plus 30 percent.

The figures below represent the MNI for people living in Canada outside the Province of Quebec:

Let it be noted that to prove they meet the MNI requirement, potential sponsors must provide their Notice of Assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for the last 3 taxation years before applying (2020, 2019, and 2018).

IRCC announced that for the 2020 application intake sponsor revenues are going to be assessed for 2020, 2019, and 2018 fiscal years as completed applications are likely to be received in January and February 2021. IRCC will accept applications with only the 2019 and 2018 Notice of Assessment (NOA) and will be asking sponsors to submit their 2020 NOAs as soon as it is made available.

Low Income Cut-Off (LICO)

MNI for Family Sponsorship in Quebec

The minimum income standard in Quebec varies from its federal counterpart, as applicants must calculate the essential income needed for the sponsor’s own family’s basic needs, including the needs of the sponsored individual(s) and their relations, regardless of if they’re not accompanying the sponsored persons.

Sponsors are presumed capable of fulfilling an undertaking if, over the past 12 months, they have had gross income from Canadian sources equivalent to the entire income appearing in Table 1 and Table 2 below. The income in both tables is indexed annually.

Amounts are in effect from January 1 up until December 31, 2021.

Table 2 below refers solely to the persons being sponsored. Principal applicants should add the relevant figure from Table 1 above to the relevant figure within the right-side column of Table 2 to reach the entire minimum income required.