April 5th, 2021 comments Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will often tell people that they do not need to hire a lawyer or consultant in order to immigrate to Canada. They are right. In 2018, IRCC approved 191,337 applications for permanent residence. Of these, 7,334 were represented by a lawyer, 11,262 by a regulated consultant, 52,066 by a family member or friend, and 191,337 had no representative. IRCC in 2018 also approved 17,678 temporary residence applications in which there was a lawyer as representative, 17,554 in which there was a regulated consultant, 258,802 in which the representative was a family member or a friend, and 2,448,311 in which the person was unrepresented.