ICYMI – Revealed: How international student spots are being distributed — unevenly — across Ontario

2026/01/13 Leave a comment

Good and useful data:

…Previous efforts to understand how PALs were distributed across the province were hindered by confidentiality claims and concerns about the impact on competitive advantage, but data obtained through an FOI request provides a detailed breakdown of 2024 allocations and usage, as well as this year’s allocations. Usage data for 2025 is not yet available.

In 2024, Ontario was allocated a total of 235,000 PALs, with a target of 141,000 permits.

Ontario’s public colleges were given 189,416 PALs but used only 55 per cent of them. Public universities, by contrast, used 82 per cent of their 35,460 allocation.

Ontario determined its first year of PAL allocations based on 2023 study permit levels, with exceptions for Algoma University and 13 colleges, including Conestoga, which received fewer permits.

Within the college sector, usage varied widely, with Humber distributing nearly all of its PALs, while Northern College used just 28 per cent. Northern, which had to shutter a private partnership as part of the federal policy changes, has since experienced layoffs, but the loss of international student has been broadly felt across Ontario’s college communities, with more than 10,000 faculty and staff let go and more than 600 college programs suspended or cancelled.

Among public universities, the University of Toronto handed out the largest number of PALs (6,165) in 2024, while the likes of Trent, Guelph, Ottawa and Waterloo universities used nearly all of their allocation. An outlier was Nipissing University, which used only 11 per cent of its PALs.

… What about this year?

In 2025, Ontario’s PAL allocation took a deep cut, falling to 181,590, which had to include, for the first time, graduate students.

Reflecting that, as well as the overall decrease, the province’s public colleges received 113,793 PALs while 57,685 went to universities.

The inclusion of PhD and master’s applicants meant, in some cases, individual numbers rose: U of T, which had 6,395 PALs the year before, received 12,338 this year.

Going into 2026, graduate students attending public institutions will be exempt from the PAL requirement but will be included in the overall cap allocation. So once again, the numbers for individual schools in 2026 will look different….

Source: Revealed: How international student spots are being distributed — unevenly — across Ontario

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ICYMI: Newcomers seeking permanent residency face uncertainty, frustration over Ontario immigration changes

2026/01/13 Leave a comment

Fixing problems after the fact rather than more due diligence in program planning or earlier corrective measures should be the goal:

…Lou Janssen Dangzalan, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said misrepresentation and fraud has plagued OINP with “unsavory agents or ghost consultants and sometimes even licensed representatives” padding applications with problematic documentation. 

But Dangzalan said it is still a “disruptive and drastic” move to the applicants and the businesses to cancel the trades stream entirely.

“This is purely a political policy choice,” he said.

“I do applaud the Ontario government for acknowledging that there’s a problem, but I’m not sure if basically using a hammer to kill a fly would be a good idea in a house of glass.”

Dangzalan said realistically, applicants should start planning for a possible future where they may need to leave Canada.

“But that doesn’t mean that their PR journey is necessarily over right there. Leaving Canada doesn’t mean that you’re already automatically excluded from the Canadian experience class.”

He said if people have to leave and wait in their home countries for PR, they can work toward gaining skilled work experience there, which can bump their scores, and boost language scores, including by learning French. 

“So, 2026 is going to be tough for a lot of people… 2026 is going to be a year of enforcement… IRCC’s going to scrutinize every single application with more diligence than they ever did before.”

“From a large policy perspective, this is a crisis… There’s still an immigration arms race. A lot of candidates are available who are very fantastic candidates and Canada is going to need this, especially at a time where Canada is trying to wean itself away from its dependence from the United States.”

Source: Newcomers seeking permanent residency face uncertainty, frustration over Ontario immigration changes

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Canada’s immigration system is favouring these kinds of applicants — even over others who score higher

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

More of the preference for French-speaking immigrants in express entry, diluting the CRS:

French-speaking candidates made up 42 per cent of the people invited for permanent residence last year via Canada’s flagship skilled immigrationselection system, which favours applicants fluent in French and is upsetting those who aren’t.

In total, 48,000 of the 113,998 applicants picked under the Express Entry system were chosen for their ability in French. They were selected in periodic draws from the talent pool where candidates post their profiles, and are awarded points out of a 1,200 maximum and ranked based on age, education, work experience and other attributes.

The prioritization of francophone immigration outside Quebec has frustrated non-French-speaking candidates and critics, especially now that Ottawa has slashed the overall intakes of permanent residents in coming years. Many question if this makes sense when candidates without French are passed over despite higher ranking scores.

The deliberate effort is in part to redress the decline in the demographic weight of French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec — down from 6.1 per cent in 1971 to about four per cent today — and ensure the long-term vitality of these minority communities that are key to “Canada’s bilingual and multicultural character.”

“Human capital really isn’t a concern for the francophone draws,” said Calgary-based immigration consultant Mandeep Lidher. “With a score in the high 300s, you’re definitely less educated and you could say less likely to succeed in the Canadian labour market or economically establish yourself.”

In response to the criticism, the Immigration Department pointed out that only top-ranking eligible candidates are selected through the francophone draws. Since selected candidates must meet general eligibility criteria, it said “they demonstrate the ability to economically establish and succeed in the Canadian labour market.”

Ottawa has reduced its permanent resident intakes from 485,000 in 2024 to 380,000 in 2026, while raising the portion of the French-speaking newcomers outside Quebec in the mix from six per cent to nine per cent, and to 12 per cent in 2029….

Source: Canada’s immigration system is favouring these kinds of applicants — even over others who score higher

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Jamie Sarkonak: The federal judge determined to dismantle Canada’s immigration safeguards

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

Judicial appointments matter and have impact. Column would have been more balanced if it had more examples of rejections:

In 2013, Toronto lawyer Avvy Yao-Yao Go described herself as a “loudmouth activist for politicians to contend with.” She was an advocate of chain migration, a former member of the Ontario law society’s equity committee, a vocal critic of journalists and politicians, and once, she even tried to force the government to pay reparations to descendants of Chinese-Canadians impacted by the head tax (after losing one appeal in this process, her organization accused an appeal judge of racism; the complaint was tossed out).

Ideally, she wouldn’t be in charge of waving migrants into the country from a judicial seat. Nevertheless, Go was made a Federal Court judge in 2021 and much of her job is playing immigration gatekeeper. The results are what you’d expect, and they’re not favourable to Canadians….

Go doesn’t wave every single asylum seeker through; her record includes rejections, too. But her decisions in the last year alone show a pattern of leniency for rule-breakers, country-shoppers and, for lack of a better term, bulls–tters. Each instance takes state capacity away from cases that truly matter. It might be that Go feels the need to hold the door open for others, but it’s the rest of us who have to pay for the riff-raff who accept the invitation.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The federal judge determined to dismantle Canada’s immigration safeguards

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Bouchard | Des vœux pour le Québec de 2026 [immigration]

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

A noter:

…Il y aurait beaucoup à faire sur le front de l’immigration. Il faudrait d’abord restaurer les programmes d’aide à l’intégration que le gouvernement vient d’abolir. Il faudrait gérer plus efficacement les effectifs à recevoir. Le Québec est ici victime, dit-on, de normes fédérales. Pourquoi ne pas les ignorer ? La crise qui s’ensuivrait sans doute serait bienvenue. Elle montrerait que le Québec peut se redresser et rejeter le rôle du quémandeur sans cesse éconduit.

Plus fondamentalement, le gouvernement Legault manifeste des attitudes et tient parfois un discours malveillant à l’égard des immigrants, dont il fait un bouc émissaire commode pour cacher ses fautes. Ici également, il y aurait un important travail à faire. Il n’est plus possible de légiférer comme si le Québec n’était composé que d’une majorité francophone….

Source: Idées | Des vœux pour le Québec de 2026

… There would be a lot to do on the immigration front. First, the integration support programs that the government has just abolished should be restored. The number of staff to be received should be managed more effectively. Quebec is here a victim, it is said, of federal standards. Why not ignore them? The crisis that would follow would probably be welcome. It would show that Quebec can recover and reject the role of the constantly rejected beggar.

More fundamentally, the Legault government shows attitudes and sometimes makes a malicious speech towards immigrants, of whom it makes a convenient scapegoat to hide its faults. Here too, there would be a lot of work to do. It is no longer possible to legislate as if Quebec were only composed of a Francophone majority….

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Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds

2026/01/12 Leave a comment

Of note, not terribly surprising but good to see the data behind it:

…The research, which was conducted by economists at universities in Toronto and Chicago, found several benefits for workers who transitioned to permanent residency status.

Temporary foreign workers who were granted permanent residency in Canada between 2004 and 2014 – and thus were no longer on closed work permits which tied them to a single employer – saw an earnings increase of 5.7 per cent three years after they obtained PR status. 

The workers directly benefited from being able to switch positions, the researchers found. There was a “sharp” and “immediate” increase in the probability of a job-to-job transition of 21.7 percentage points over the three years, the paper estimates. And many of those workers switched into better-paying industries. 

“Our main question of interest when we began this research was: what is the effect of being on a closed permit relative to an open permit?” said Kory Kroft, a professor of economics at University of Toronto, and one of the paper’s authors. 

“The main takeaway is once you relax the restrictions, you see a big increase in job mobility. You find that immigrants who were clustered at low-wage jobs quickly sorted themselves into higher-wage jobs.” 

The TFW program is a key immigration stream in Canada that allows employers to hire mostly low-wage foreign workers on a temporary basis in sectors where the government determines there is a shortage of domestic labour, such as agriculture….

Source: Temporary foreign workers switch jobs and earn more after becoming permanent residents, study finds

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Want to immigrate to Canada? Learn French

2026/01/10 Leave a comment

Political objectives over economic, with little evidence shared:

At a time when Canada is clamping down on immigration, there is now a clear strategy for settling permanently in the country: Learn some French.

In 2025, the federal government invited 48,000 people to apply for permanent residency through the Express Entry program for skilled workers because of their French-language abilities. This was substantially higher than invites sent to people with recent work experience in Canada (35,850) or those in health care (14,500) or the trades (1,250).

Over all, the government sent just shy of 114,000 invitations through the Express Entry system for skilled immigration, which ranks candidates by a score. A candidate’s points are based on such factors as age, education, work experience – and crucially, English or French.

…Labour economists have generally taken a dim view of those changes, because it means that stronger candidates can be passed over in favour of those with lower scores.

For example, on Dec. 16, the government invited 5,000 people with recent Canadian work experience to apply for permanent resident status. The cut-off score to get an invite was 515 points.

A day later, 6,000 people were invited to apply in the French category, and the cut-off score was 399 points.

Someone with a lower score may be older, have less education or work experience, weaker language skills – or some combination thereof.

Source: Want to immigrate to Canada? Learn French

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55 ans d’attente pour une résidence permanente

2026/01/10 Leave a comment

Not tenable:

Les immigrants qui ont demandé la résidence permanente via certains programmes humanitaires pourraient ne jamais l’obtenir de leur vivant. Devant la baisse des cibles d’admission d’Ottawa, les délais d’attente ont explosé, allant jusqu’à dépasser les 50 ans dans certains cas, a constaté Le Devoir.

De tous les programmes, c’est celui visant les Ukrainiens qui présente la pire attente : en juillet dernier, le délai de traitement des dossiers était de plus de 55 ans. Pour les ressortissants de Hong Kong, pour lesquels le Canada a mis en place une mesure humanitaire extraordinaire visant à faciliter l’obtention de la résidence permanente, il est de 50 ans. Et dans d’autres programmes humanitaires, l’attente varie entre quelques mois et… plusieurs décennies….

Demandes nombreuses, cibles faibles

L’avocat en immigration Steven Meurrens, à l’origine de multiples analyses de données d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada (IRCC), n’est pas étonné de voir les délais exploser. « Je ne suis pas tellement surpris par les délais de traitement élevés », a-t-il souligné au Devoir.

En plus des données qu’il a récoltées au moyen de ses demandes d’accès à l’information, Me Meurrens pointe les données du cahier de transition de la ministre canadienne de l’Immigration, Lena Metlege Diab, publiées sur le site d’IRCC en mai dernier. Le temps d’attente pour les nouveaux demandeurs de la catégorie « motifs humanitaires et politiques d’intérêt public » varie de 12 à 600 mois (de 1 à 50 ans). « Les délais de traitement de nombreuses politiques d’intérêt public et demandes fondées sur des motifs d’ordre humanitaire au Canada augmentent en raison de la forte demande, des contrôles d’admission limités et des objectifs d’admission peu élevés », lit-on sur le site….

Source: 55 ans d’attente pour une résidence permanente

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Geoff Russ: Immigration made affordability worse. Liberals gaslighted us all

2026/01/09 Leave a comment

I lean more to incompetence and overly political objectives. But the debate is here, largely focussed on the practicalities of housing, healthcare and infrastructure, which are shared between immigrants and Canadian-born but with some increase of concern over values, with some of the excesses of pro-palestinian demonstrations and activities, likely contributing to those concerns:

…So what happened to Miller and Trudeau’s demands that Canadians ignore the changes wrought by millions of newcomers who arrived under their government?

There are two unflattering possibilities.

First, they may have been dishonest. Swelling the number of people living in Canada superficially boosts GDP and allows the Liberals to brag about growth while ignoring worsening GDP per capita. Many skeptics correctly termed this trick “human quantitative easing.”

The second possibility is simple incompetence. Perhaps they believed that demand for housing and supply would magically align if enough potential construction workers entered the country, and municipalities would build at a scale unseen since the Second World War.

In either case, the people who noticed that both were nonsense received scolding and spin in return.

In 2023, Maclean’s published a piece defiantly declaring that “limiting immigration isn’t the solution,” and suggested that blaming the surge of newcomers was to shoot at an “easy target,” while also noting that the population had grown by over a million people in 2022 due to temporary and permanent immigration.

On the hard left, arguments that there was too much immigration were slandered as a moral panic, with critics instead blaming the evils of capitalism, and castigating those asking questions for apparently scapegoating foreigners.

Trying to ignore the relationship between the numbers of immigrants, government policy, and negative economic pressure is akin to ignoring the connection between peanuts, people with allergies, and anaphylactic shock.

Do you notice the sleight of hand? It is perfectly acceptable to believe that bad housing policies are to blame, and that zoning, fees, and the lack of purpose-built rentals all matter.

But if you so much as imply that historically outsized immigration levels worsened the lot of everyday Canadians, you are suspect, and those suspicions were endorsed by the Liberals.

This is why the pivot matters. The Liberals were eventually forced to half-admit their mistakes, or malpractice, with Trudeau confessing his government “didn’t get the balance right” on immigration after the pandemic, as if it were a mediocre martini with too much vermouth. They spent years denying that population growth was a central pressure on rising housing prices, and now want to congratulate themselves for changing course when most young Canadians are deeply pessimistic about their future.

Advocates for mass immigration have lost the economic argument, and most Canadians want a reduction in the annual numbers. After years of Ottawa and its ideological allies minimizing the material effects of immigration, Canadians should insist on an honest second conversation about the social and cultural consequences of rapid change.

Surveys show Canadians want sterner expectations regarding assimilation and mainstream national norms, and they deserve that debate without being smeared for noticing the changes around them.

The supposed Canadian exceptionalism when it comes to the pitfalls of immigration and multiculturalism is winding down. For those who want a truly responsible approach to both subjects, now is the time to keep pushing the boundaries of debate and discourse.

Source: Geoff Russ: Immigration made affordability worse. Liberals gaslighted us all

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Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now

2026/01/09 Leave a comment

Good detailed overview of Census 2021 (albeit years late). Possibly preparing for debates and discussions regarding the 2026 Census:

Numbers can tell a story. Canada is home to 41.58 million people, according to the latest population estimates, and the average age was 41.7. At the time of the last census, just over half were women and girls, and just under half were men and boys. Of the nearly 30.5 million people 15 and older, 100,815 (0.33 per cent) were transgender or nonbinary. The average household size was 2.4 people. Five per cent of the population — 1.8 million people — self-identified as Indigenous. Almost one-quarter, or 8.4 million people, were immigrants, many hailing from the three leading places of birth: India, the Philippines and China. Of the 450-plus ethnic or cultural origins reported, “Canadian” was tops at 5.7 million people.

The last census conducted by Statistics Canada in 2021, and released in stages throughout 2022, revealed the ways Canada stands out among the G7, including fastest population growth (mostly due to people moving here from elsewhere), most educated workforce (again, thanks in large part to immigrants), highest proportion of common-law couples and, at almost one-quarter, the highest proportion of foreign-born people who are now citizens.

In December, it was revealed that Canada’s population decreased for the first time in about five years — thanks again to immigration or, rather, a drop in its numbers. Driven by caps on international students and temporary foreign workers, the country’s population as of Oct. 1, 2025, declined by roughly 76,068 people, or 0.2 per cent, from July 1, when the population was estimated to be 41.65 million….

Source: Older, 70% white, plunging fertility and lost faith: Who Canada is now

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