Study permit application refused, officer completely missed my current visa

[ordrinn]

Hi!
I applied for a study permit (from inside Canada) on December 22, 2025. To give a bit of background, I'm currently a visiting student on a visitor visa which I obtained in September 2025. I have a visitor visa instead of a study permit since I initially intended to stay for less than 6 months but later decided to extend my visiting studentship to 1 year so I applied for a study permit. In addition to this, I held a work permit from May 2024 to April 2025 and returned to my country before this work permit expired so it should be irrelevant for my current situation. Today, my study permit application was refused. I believe the officer is somehow unaware that I left Canada in April 2025 and returned with new status in October 2025, which is crazy to me. I was absolutely not out of status when I applied (still not out of status today). Can they not see when I left and entered Canada? I quote from their decision notes:

Section 181 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR) requires that foreign nationals wishing to remain longer in Canada submit an application for extension of their temporary resident status on or before the expiry of the authorized period. The applicant's temporary resident status in Canada as a worker expired on 2025/04/30 and their application for a study permit extension was made 2025/12/22. As the applicant applied while out of status, the application is refused as per R181(1). Refusal letter sent on this date.

As the applicant's status as a temporary resident in Canada expired over 90 days ago, they are not eligible for restoration under section 182 of the IRPR.

Also the letter implies that I applied for a "study permit extension" but I never had a study permit in the first place. I followed the prompts on IRCC secure to end up with IMM5709 as my application form which clearly states that I am applying for a study permit with visitor status.

Is this clearly a mistake from their end? What are my options? I read somewhere that I can ask for a "reconsideration" of my application but couldn't find anything about this on IRCC's website. I really appreciate any information!