The Carney government will hold immigration levels steady in the coming three years, while also announcing it will add 200,000 permanent residence spots in 2027 for temporary migrants already established in Canada.
The economic class will make up 64.4 per cent of the targets, followed by those under family reunification (21.3 per cent) and the rest as resettled refugees, protected persons and on humanitarian grounds.
The budget said that level would be maintained through 2029, and that the number of temporary residents, including students and workers, will be held at 370,000 for the next three years.
The Liberal government has pledged to reduce the share of temporary residents to five per cent of the country’s population by the end of 2027. Yet, it still stood at 6.7 per cent as of July, with many stuck in the bottleneck for permanent residence, hanging on to the hope to stay for good.
Under tremendous pressure to fulfil that campaign promise, the new plan includes a one-time initiative to help as many as 200,000 people already living in Canada transition to permanent residence in 2027 — equally split between the worker and humanitarian streams. This will be on top of the 380,000 permanent resident targets in 2027.
“I would characterize that as an administrative clearing of the decks,” said Rick Lamanna of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association. “These people in most cases have been here for quite a while, living in this temporary, suspended existence. They’ve been vetted. It’s good for them, it’s good for Canada.”
This also means Canada will see one of the largest admissions of permanent residents in history, totalling 580,000, said Ottawa-based immigration lawyer Cédric Marin.
“These are not new admissions,” he noted. “They’re people that are currently inside Canada, that are employed and (some) have a house. But it’s almost a way, in my view, to reduce the temporary resident population that they set themselves.”
Under the one-time measure, provinces will be able to identify workers who have already applied for permanent residence under select federal immigration programs, including the Atlantic immigration program and others that are closed to new applications such as the programs for start-up entrepreneurs, self-employed persons, agri-food workers and home care workers.
With the additional spaces, officials said they also hope to process all remaining applications under the permanent residence pathways for temporary residents from Hong Kong and those in the Ukraine family reunification program.
While this effort is welcomed, the Migrant Rights Network said the 200,000 additional permanent resident spots are a drop in the bucket, given the 2.15 million people who held work or study permits in Canada as of August 2026.
…Two cohorts, each made up of 100,000 temporary residents, will be given priority for permanent residency. A workers’ cohort will consist of those who applied for permanent residency through special immigration pathways such as the Start-up Visa Program, Home Care Worker pilot programs, Atlantic Immigration Program and the Agri-Food Pilot.
A humanitarian cohort will process all remaining applications in the Ukraine family reunification pathway and the Hong Kong permanent residents pathway. It will also prioritize permanent residency for spouses and children already living in Canada.
Many of the immigration pathways mentioned were suspended by the government in late 2025 because of processing backlogs. Last year’s immigration-levels plan also introduced an initiative to transition 115,000 temporary residents already in Canada to permanent status as well….
About Andrew Andrew blogs and tweets public policy issues, particularly the relationship between the political and bureaucratic levels, citizenship and multiculturalism. His latest book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, recounts his experience as a senior public servant in this area.
About Andrew
