Thank you for your patience and for helping me without any incentive.
I'll try to summarize:
-My friend is a PR who came as a refugee, and is trying to bring his spouse and children over as part of the One-Year-Window application.
-As part of the application, they need to submit a imm5406e. That form, when downloaded from the IRCC website, includes a "Validate" button. The IRCC information all seems to indicate that forms with the validate function are required to have the barcodes on them (i.e., they require them to have been validated).
-However, the validate function doesn't work in the form provided by IRCC (which is how this thread started).
-Above, many fine people have indicated they simply filled it out and scanned it - no mention of any validation/barcodes. So I guess I'm wondering, do we really get to ignore that validation step?