Last Updated On 24 October 2024, 8:58 AM EDT (Toronto Time)

It seems like Canada is now hitting the brakes on immigration via it’s major immigration categories and capping international students.

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the population of temporary residents was at around 6.8% of the total Canadian population, as per the most recent Statistics Canada data.

Canadian immigration minister Marc Miller said that they aim to reduce the temporary residents’ population in Canada to 5% by 2027.

Some part of it involves transitioning temporary residents to permanent residents by promoting more domestic rounds of invitations.

Early Signs of immigration slowing down

The target for permanent residents under all the immigration categories is set at 485,000 for 2024.

This also includes temporary residents already in Canada who have transitioned to permanent residency and did a virtual landing to complete their process of becoming permanent residents.

In light of newly updated IRCC data, Canada is on track to welcome more than half a million new permanent residents in 2024, with 210,865 already admitted in the first 5 months of 2024.

Permanent Residency Rounds of Invitations Reduction

Economic-class immigration makes up over 60% of the annual targets set by the Canadian government.

Canada has set an annual limit of 281,135 permanent residents under the economic class.

The Federal Express Entry system is allocated 110,770 spots, while provincial nominee programs (PNPs) are allocated 110,000 spots.

Under the Express Entry system, the Canadian immigration department conducts rounds of invitations, commonly known as draws, to select individuals to apply for permanent residency.

Similarly, most of the major provinces conduct such draws, sending out permanent residency invitations.

This year, a pattern has emerged in which provinces have now reduced the number of invitations sent in these draws.

For example, British Columbia conducts draws every week on Tuesday (sometimes on Wednesdays). This year, the number of invitations sent in each of these draws has decreased by around 50–60%.

Ontario has reduced the number of PNP draws this year and also the number of invitations sent in such rounds of invitations.

The federal Express Entry draws were also skipped between April 24 and May 30, although July surprised everyone with the IRCC sending out the highest number of invitations (6,470) in a single week in 2024 and 3,200 invitations already this week.

But this seems to make up for the skipping of rounds of invitations in previous months.

Is permanent immigration really a problem?

It is important to analyze whether permanent immigration is really a problem for Canada or not.

As per the current set immigration targets of 500,000 permanent residents annually for 2025 and 2026, Canada increased the immigration targets by around 84% as compared to the 271,840 welcomed in 2015.

At the same time, Canada ignored monitoring the temporary residents, which grew significantly since there was no set target and Canadian educational institutions welcomed a record number of international students to increase their profits.

With limited prospects and competitiveness to become permanent residents, temporary residents are either choosing to go back to study or buying LMIAs to get work permits to extend their stay in Canada.

Also, a record number of positive LMIAs (labour market impact assessments) are being issued by the Employment and Social Development of Canada (ESDC), allowing Canadian employers to get work permits for foreign nationals.

This year, record-high LMIAs have been issued, while Statistics Canada reports that the unemployment rate is increasing and the number of job openings is continuously plummeting month-on-month.

Not all, but yes, there are a lot of employers involved in selling LMIAs to foreign nationals for $20,000–40,000, which is illegal.

In other words, a person with that kind of money is buying their way into Canada, irrespective of whether they have the skills or not.

At the same time, Canadian citizens and permanent residents are struggling to land a job because their potential positions might have been sold out through one of these LMIAs.

Because of the above-mentioned reasons and other factors, the number of temporary residents in Canada increased to 2.8 million as of April 2024.

So in the bigger picture, the rise in temporary residents’ population is comparatively more problematic than permanent residency.

Rather, as the immigration minister said, permanent residency is one of the potent solutions to reducing temporary residents’ populations.

Will Canada reduce immigration targets in November?

Canada is due for the next federal election before October 2025 and immigration has become one of the most important decisive factors for voters to choose the next government.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has already mentioned in one of his interviews that immigration targets will be much lower during their governance.

On the other hand, the current government, the Liberals, is now trying to make up the image from an immigration standpoint, with the immigration minister announcing a cap on international students.

And for the first time ever in November, Marc Miller will be announcing annual immigration targets for temporary residents.

Every year, the Canadian government is required by legislation to announce annual immigration targets on November 1 and with the next elections due by October 2025, this will be the last chance for Liberals to convince voters.

Canadian sentiments’ are now against immigration as compared to the previous times when Canadians were in favour of immigration.

So we believe that Immigration Minister Marc Miller will announce in November a gradual reduction in the annual immigration (permanent and temporary) levels for the next 3 years.

Satinder Bains

Satinder brings expertise, knowledge, and experience related to internal work flows at IRCC. She worked at Canadian Consulate in Chandigarh before moving to Canada. Her articles on “Chinook – An internal IRCC tool used to bulk process temporary applications” was one of the notable work on our news website