Canada sets out plans to reduce immigration from 2025
On 24 October 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, which for the first time includes controlled targets for temporary residents, specifically international students and foreign workers, as well as for permanent residents.
According to IRCC, the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan is expected to result in a marginal population decline of 0.2% in both 2025 and 2026, before returning to a population growth of 0.8% in 2027. These forecasts account for the announcement of reduced targets across multiple immigration streams over the next two years, as well as expected temporary resident outflows, natural population loss and other factors.
Compared to last year’s plan, the government is:
- reducing from 500,000 permanent residents to 395,000 in 2025
- reducing from 500,000 permanent residents to 380,000 in 2026
- setting a target of 365,000 permanent residents in 2027.
The Levels Plan also supports efforts to reduce temporary resident volumes to 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2026. Given temporary resident reduction measures announced in September and this past year, Canada’s temporary population will decrease over the next few years as significantly more temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents or leave Canada compared to new ones arriving.
Specifically, compared to each previous year, the government expects to see Canada’s temporary population:
- decline by 445,901 in 2025, and
- decline by 445,662 in 2026, and then
- slightly increase by 17,439 in 2027.
These reductions are the result of a series of changes over the past year, including a cap on international students and tightened eligibility requirements for temporary foreign workers.
Other measures from the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan include the following:
- Transitioning more temporary residents who are already in Canada as students and workers to permanent residents.
- Focusing on long-term economic growth and key labour market sectors, such as health and trades. Permanent resident admissions in the economic class will reach 61.7% of total admissions by 2027.
- Strengthening Francophone communities outside Quebec and supporting their economic prosperity. Of the overall permanent resident admission targets, Francophone immigration will represent:
- 8.5% in 2025
- 9.5% in 2026
- 10% in 2027.
Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), the Minister of IRC must table Canada’s Immigration Levels Plan (Levels Plan) in Parliament each year on or before 1 November.
Since 2017, a rolling three-year Levels Plan has been presented, which projects permanent residents (PR) admissions to Canada. Starting in the fall of 2024, IRCC is expanding the Levels Plan to include targets for both PR admissions and new temporary resident (TR) arrivals.
The Government of Canada has put in place measures to manage the volume of temporary resident arrivals, uphold the integrity of the immigration system and protect vulnerable people, including:
- reforming the International Student Program
- tightening eligibility requirements for
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