Canadian Immigration Plans
Photo Credit: Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via CBC
Canada’s 2023 to 2025 Immigration Levels Plan was released by Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship on Nov. 1, 2022. The plan set targets to welcome 465,000 residents in 2023, 485,000 residents in 2024, and 500,000 residents in 2025. These targets are higher than the former 2022-2024 Immigration Levels Plan, which aimed to admit 447,055 permanent residents in 2023, as well as 451,000 in 2024. The plan was made to help drive economic growth, protect democratic and human rights, reunite families, and fulfil Canada’s humanitarian commitments, including resettling vulnerable Afghans.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), a governmental department, has presented a rolling multi-year (three years) Immigration Levels Plan every year since 2017. The new report presents several admission targets for the next three years, with a range of 410,000 to 505,000 in 2023, 430,000 to 542,000 in 2024, and 442,000 to 550,000 in 2025. Working with the provinces and territories, the 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan also brings an enlarged focus on attracting permanent residents, temporary residents, students, and visitors to varied regions of Canada. This includes small towns and rural communities.
IRCC worked with the governmental department Employment and Social Development Canada to carry out efforts to enhance worker protection for temporary foreign workers. Specifically, by consulting publicly proposed new requirements for workers, such as prohibiting employers from charging recruitment fees to temporary foreign workers.
The plan also recognizes the important role immigration plays in addressing labour market needs and economic growth, and intends the economic proportion of immigrants to be 60.3 per cent by 2025. The economic immigration class is the biggest source of permanent resident admissions in Canada, at about 62 per cent of admissions in 2021.
60,228 refugees and protected persons were admitted to Canada as permanent residents in 2021, according to the IRCC. In addition, 11,377 people were admitted on compassionate, humanitarian, and public policy grounds. A United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) report showed that Canada was a global leader in resettling refugees in 2021.
Canada maintained a strong tradition of offering protection to those in need in 2021. As part of this, Canada’s top five admissions of permanent residents as resettled refugees by country of citizenship include Afghanistan (6,105), Syria (4,195), Eritrea (3,674), Iraq (1,520), and the Democratic Republic of Somalia (1,297), as stated in the 2022 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration.
In 2021, the Government of Canada committed to welcome at least 400,000 Afghan refugees and vulnerable persons by 2024. This is being done through multiple program and policy initiatives in IRCC. This includes a special immigration program for Afghans who assisted the Government of Canada, and a pathway for extended family members of former Afghan interpreters who previously immigrated to Canada under programs in either 2009 or 2012.
Francophone immigration plays a vital role in upholding the bilingual nature of the country as well as supporting the growth of French linguistic minority communities. In 2021, 6,946 French-speaking permanent residents were admitted to Canada outside of Quebec. IRCC’s Francophone Immigration Strategy aspires to reach a target of 4.4 per cent of immigrants outside of Quebec being French speaking by the end of 2023.
Another element of Canada’s immigration is its International Student Program, which is an essential part of its global attractiveness. International students bring many benefits like new cultures, ideas, and competencies, as well as other long-term benefits. The number of international students entering Canada in 2021 surpassed pre-pandemic levels. IRCC offices in Canada and overseas continued to process study permit applications for students accepted for study at Designated Learning Institutions in 2021, with 445,776 permit holders that entered Canada.