The federal government has announced it will cut the number of permanent residents allowed into Canada over the next three years.
Canada’s immigration targets will fall from 500,000 new permanent residents in both 2025 and 2026, instead being changed to 395,000 in 2025 and 380,000 in 2026. It will drop to 365,000 in 2027.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a press conference that while Canadians are “justifiably proud” of their immigration system, the federal government has a responsibility to ensure “that pride, that faith in immigration, is not undermined.”
He said Ottawa initially increased immigration after the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a labour shortage, but the economy had recovered and it was time to make adjustments.
“We are acting today because in the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labour needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill on Oct. 24.
The new immigration levels plan will cause a 0.2 percent population decline over the next two years, which will “alleviate some pressure in the housing market,” a government press release said. It said the plan will “reduce the housing supply gap by approximately 670,000 units” over the next few years.
“With this plan, we’re proposing a managed migration plan that puts the federal government in control over the numbers of people coming to this country, and will contribute to a positive future for all Canadians,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said during the press conference.
Canada’s population grew by around 1.3 million people between January 2023 and January 2024, with Statistics Canada noting that 97.6 percent of that growth was due to immigration. Statistics Canada also noted in July 2024 that non-permanent residents account for 6.8 percent of Canada’s population, currently sitting at over 2.8 million people.
“The caps that we put in place are not measures that we took lightly,” Miller said.
“We are an open country, but not everyone can come to this country. Permanent residency is something that we hold dear. It has a value, as does Canadian citizenship. We’ve been a very generous country and will continue to do so.”
Trudeau also criticized corporations that he said have chosen to “abuse our temporary measures employed in exploiting foreign workers” while refusing to hire Canadians for fair wages. In August, the federal government announced measures to reduce the number of temporary foreign workers from 6.8 percent of Canada’s population to 5 percent over the next three years.
During the press conference, Miller was asked by reporters about a recent Abacus poll that found that 53 percent of Canadians viewed immigration negatively. Millers said while it was “undeniable” that the number of immigrants had impacted affordability, there was “nuance” to the figure.
Miller said some politicians had been attempting to “weaponize” immigration to benefit during election season. “At the same time, I’m not going to call people names that have been questioning the volume. The reality is that volume at this particular point in time has been very aggressive. It’s contributed to keeping us out of recession, but it’s come with some challenges,” he said.
A Royal Bank of Canada report has said that Canada’s high immigration levels prevented the country from officially slipping into a recession, which is defined by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Canada’s economy grew by just 0.4 percent in the first quarter of 2024 after posting no change in the fourth quarter of 2023.
During a press conference held the same day, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said the Liberals’ announcement on immigration was a “massive admission of failure.”
“We had a controlled, common-sense immigration system that had worked for a century and a half, and Justin Trudeau came along and with reckless abandon totally demolished it,” Poilievre said. “Trudeau’s last-minute, pre-election reversal cannot be believed. He can’t fix the immigration system that he broke.”
