What is my status if my permit expires while my extension application is still being processed?

Provided you applied to extend or change your permit before it expired and you remain in Canada, maintained status keeps your existing conditions in effect while IRCC processes the new application. This means the same rights and restrictions you had under the expired permit — for example, whether and where you could work or study — generally continue during this period, rather than leaving you in a gap with no status at all.

This protection depends entirely on having applied before the original permit's expiry date; applying even a day after it lapses does not qualify for maintained status and instead puts you into the separate, discretionary restoration process, with its own defined window and requirements. Maintained status also ends the moment the pending application is decided, whichever way that decision goes.

Because the whole protection turns on that single filing date, keeping clear proof of when the extension application was submitted, and confirming it was actually filed before the expiry date, is one of the most important things to get right in this situation.