An insider’s look at how visa offices process, triage, and assess immigration applications.
Included with our Passes – Learn more
Annie Beaudoin
May 7, 2026 at 12:00pm EST
$90
3 hours
Attend Live Online and On-Demand Recording
Go behind the curtain of Canadian visa offices to understand how immigration decisions are really made. This in-depth course reveals the internal structures, workflows, and pressures that shape outcomes—from delegated authority and officer discretion to the role of local knowledge and AI systems such as Chinook. Through concrete examples, participants will see how files are triaged, why inconsistencies occur, and how to recognize when procedural fairness or program-integrity concerns arise. You’ll also learn practical strategies for communicating effectively with visa offices, preparing clients for interviews, and addressing refusals or fairness letters. By the end of the session, you’ll have a clearer picture of the decision-making ecosystem inside IRCC—and the tools to anticipate, navigate, and influence it to protect your clients’ interests.
• Different levels of decision-making levels: (Non-Designated Immigration Officers, Designated Immigration Officers, Canada based Officers and Migration Program Manager, Consul General)
• Understanding the Delegated Authority
• Using the Delegated Authority to ensure that our client receives a decision that is valid in law.
• Influences of the Program Manager’s background and values
• Concrete examples of how it can influence a decision
• The process of misrepresentation recommendation
• Egos
• What is referred to when we speak of ‘Local specialized knowledge’ of the Immigration Officers around the world
• How does Local specialized knowledge affect decisions?
• Concrete example: US Immigration laws
• TRV Online applications(arrival, assignment, decision, etc.)
• Where does it usually go wrong?
• Triage and preassessment
• AI and Chinook
• ‘Cutting corners’ in the decision-making process
• How are average processing times calculated by IRCC?
• Realities faced on a daily basis at visa offices
• Pressure on decision-makers
• Inconsistent processing times – IRCC managing file processing times
• How are Webforms dispatched?
• Emailing visa offices
• Privileged access to a decision-maker and possible conflict of interest
• Visa office Quotas – fact of fiction?
• Quantity versus quality
• Technology
• Paper versus online
• Instincts
• Research and access to data
• Infallible lie detectors?
• Example of questions
• How to prepare your client for an interview
• RCMP in some Visa offices
• Human trafficking
• Other concrete examples
• How to determine if it’s the end of the road for the client?
• Where does the allowed discretion end?
• How are procedural fairness and program integrity integrated into the decision-making process?
• How can those principles/concepts be safeguarded when the number of applications increases at an exponential rate?
• How to use these principles to ensure fair and equitable decisions for your clients
Fulfill your CPD requirements with our expertly curated passes. Dive deep into specialized topics or explore a wide range of courses—all in one convenient package. Learn more.
Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant
Senior Consultant, Beaudoin Immigration Consulting
Annie Beaudoin has over 20 years of high-level expertise in Canadian Immigration. She was a Canadian Immigration Officer and worked for the Government of Canada – IRCC for 15 years. Her years of experience as an Immigration Officer in a Canadian Visa Office at the Canadian Consulate General in Los Angeles have allowed her to accumulate rare high-level expertise in Canadian Immigration in complex cases and inadmissibilities to Canada.
Ms. Annie Beaudoin is the owner and senior consultant at Beaudoin Immigration Consulting. Her RCIC license number is R533869.
She also teaches Immigration Law at the University of Montreal and at Queens University. Furthermore, she is a member of the Discipline Tribunal of the College (CICC).
Over the years, she has worked on the entire spectrum of visa categories in Canada and was asked to develop technical knowledge on inadmissibility(s) to Canada, including criminal inadmissibility originating from the United States and other foreign countries. Therefore, Ms. Beaudoin possesses unparalleled experience in complex permanent residence and temporary residence applications & the invaluable concrete perspective of the actual governmental decision-makers.
Ms. Beaudoin is passionate about Canadian immigration and loves working with an international clientele. She is always dedicated to providing professional services in a transparent manner with a specific focus on her clients’ needs and goals. She wishes to contribute to the industry at large and share her knowledge as a mentor. She also is a speaker at numerous Canadian Immigration Conferences every year.
Born and raised in Québec City, Ms. Beaudoin is also bilingual in both of Canada’s official languages: French and English.
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Absolutely. Every LPEN course is recorded, and the recording is added to your account within a few business days. You can log in anytime to watch it on demand and still receive your digital certificate of completion.
LPEN seeks accreditation for each course from the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC) and the Law Society of Ontario (LSO),the Law Society of BC (LSBC) when applicable. Accreditation details and approved CPD hours are listed in the CPD Credits section on each course page, so you can easily confirm how the course qualifies toward your professional development requirements.
A digital certificate of completion will be available once the course recording has been uploaded. After that, you can follow the steps at the top of your My Courses page—where you’ll also find a short video explaining how to download your certificate. Be sure to save it as part of your documentation for your CPD hours.
This course may be included in one or several LPEN Passes. Passes offer discounted rates and access to multiple courses, making CPD compliance simpler. Check out our Passes page to see where it is included.
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