Question Period Note: IMMIGRATION LEVELS PLAN FOR 2024-2026

Canada’s projected immigration levels for 2024 to 2026

• Immigration contributes to Canada’s economic growth and strengthens our communities.
• The 2024-2026 Immigration Levels Plan projects stabilized levels in permanent resident admissions with targets of 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 both in 2025 and 2026.
• The Levels Plan sets out a path for responsible immigration targets to support economic prosperity and address labour market shortages. Over half of all planned admissions are dedicated to the economic class, reaching over 60% in 2025.
• Stabilizing immigration levels will help Canada’s domestic systems adjust to recent population growth, to support positive outcomes for newcomers as well as those already here.
• IRCC is moving toward a more integrated approach to levels planning so that services and support, including affordable housing, are available to welcome and successfully integrate new arrivals while maximizing the social and economic benefits that immigrants bring.
Responsive
• The multi-year levels plan is developed in consultation with provinces and territories, including Québec. Pursuant to the Canada-Québec Accord, Québec has full responsibility for the selection of immigrants destined to the province. The plan is also developed in consultation with stakeholder organizations, and the public.
• While public support for immigration in Canada has remained relatively stable and strong for many years, it can decline quickly if the perception of a well-managed migration system with positive outcomes is lost. Canadians are still likely to see immigration as having a positive effect on economic growth and the availability of labour, however they are also increasingly seeing it as having a negative impact on access to healthcare and the availability of affordable housing, signaling the need to stabilize levels.
• Demand for housing has outpaced investments for several decades. Immigration is part of the solution to the current housing crisis. A major consideration in annual levels planning is addressing labour shortages in key sectors such as education, health care, technology, transportation, and trades—including construction workers who are needed to build new homes.

2024-2026 Immigration Levels Plan
• The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires that the immigration minister table the Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, including the Immigration Levels Plan for the following year, by November 1, or within 30 sitting days if a House of Parliament is not sitting on November 1.
• The 2024-2026 Immigration Levels Plan sets immigration levels to 485,000 in 2024, to 500,000 in 2025; and then stabilizes at 500,000 in 2026 to continue to meet economic and family reunification objectives, while also responding to humanitarian and geopolitical crises around the world.
• Extensive consultations were conducted for the development of the Plan, including engagement with provinces and territories, partners, stakeholders, and the public. This engagement built upon extensive engagement efforts already undertaken through a strategic review of Canada’s immigration system. More specifically, engagement efforts included:
o Engagement with provinces and territories was conducted bilaterally and multilaterally, guided by the Joint Federal-Provincial-Territorial Immigration Levels Consultation Framework, as approved through the Forum of Ministers Responsible for Immigration (FMRI). Multilateral consultations began in May 2023. Bilateral consultations were held with every province (except Nunavut, who did not respond to invitations) and were conducted in July and August 2023.
o Under the Canada-Québec Accord, the province of Québec was engaged on a bilateral basis, including regular and ad hoc meetings with officials as well as through a formal exchange of letters.
o The Department also conducted its annual consultation survey, which was shared with key stakeholders (business representatives, educational institutions, faith-based organizations, multicultural or ethno-cultural associations, municipalities and regional administrations, settlement or resettlement organizations, etc.). A total of 633 stakeholders completed the survey from the 4,780 invited. This number represents a substantial increase from the 2,867 stakeholders organizations invited in 2022.
o Lastly, efforts continued this year to increase the response rate from Indigenous organizations. The Department invited 286 individuals from First Nations, Métis and Inuit serving and/or representing organizations to provide feedback. This is an increase from 80 representatives the previous year. The Department also conducted outreach with National Indigenous Organizations to establish and strengthen a dialogue on immigration levels with them.
• This plan features broad ranges to allow flexibility to adapt to an increasingly unstable global context.
• With respect to the category proportions of the plan:
o Admissions in the Economic class represent the largest proportion of admissions each year.

 The Federal High Skilled program will continue to increase steadily to help fulfill important labour market needs, and to help reach Canada’s new and ambitious targets for Francophone immigration outside of Quebec. It will then plateau in 2026 to ensure Canada’s domestic systems are able to keep pace with this level of growth.

 Similarly, the Provincial Nominee Program will continue to grow steadily and then plateau in 2026 to support provincial and territorial efforts to address labour market shortages, while also providing more predictability to assist with long-term planning.

o Family class will reach 118,000 admissions by 2025 and then stabilize, with small increases from 2024 to 2025 to Spouses, Partners and Children, and the Parents and Grandparents programs.

o Refugees and Protected Persons admissions will fall slightly to 76,115 in 2024, before decreasing to 72,750 by 2025 and 2026, in part because of the achievement of the commitment to bring 40,000 vulnerable Afghans by 2024.

o The Humanitarian, Compassionate and Other category decreases to 13,750 in 2024, and then again to 8,000 by 2025 and 2026.

o Refugee and humanitarian admissions include a number of Government commitments, including the new commitments to welcome people from the Americas; and continuing to welcome those fleeing Afghanistan.
• Canada has historically enjoyed a generally high level of national consensus on the value of immigration, although there are more recent concerns over the rapid pace and volume, especially in larger urban centres where population growth is most evident.

o Public opinion research conducted by IRCC in February 2023 revealed that 22% found the 2023 target of 465,000 new immigrants “too many” (a 7% increase from 2022), 52% “about right” (similar to 2022), and 22% “too few” (a 3% decrease from 2022).
o Results of third-party research conducted by Abacus Data in June 2023 were less positive, showing that 61% of respondents felt the 2025 target of 500,000 new immigrants is either “way too high” (37%) or “too high” (24%), with 28% saying it is “about right” and only 4% saying it is “too low”. Media and the public are currently voicing concerns about the immigration system and linking international student rates and TR intake in particular to housing and other absorptive capacity issues; however, the Canadian business community generally advocates for increased economic immigration and is active and engaged in skills and talent strategies.
o Results from the latest Focus Canada research by the Environics Institute released in October 2023 show decreasing support for current immigration levels. The research provides evidence that this negative shift is primarily driven by concerns about immigration’s effects on the housing market and the country’s ability to properly settle so many newcomers.
Francophone immigration: The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has set ambitious new targets for Francophone Immigration outside of Quebec: 6% in 2024, 7% in 2025, and 8% in 2026. This is up from the previous goal of 4.4% by 2023, which IRCC met a year early, in 2022.
Mandate Commitment: Delivering the 2024-2026 Immigration Levels Plan is a part of the December 2021 mandate commitment to “continue to bring newcomers to Canada to drive economic growth and recovery, as set out in the 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan.”
Levels planning: By setting targets and planning ranges for each of the immigration categories, the Government of Canada establishes priorities among economic, social, and refugee objectives. Levels planning then enables the Department and its partners to allocate processing, security, and settlement resources accordingly.
Multi-year planning: In fall 2017, Canada introduced its first multi-year immigration levels plan in over a decade. The current plan adds an additional year (2026), maintaining the three-year planning horizon set out in last year’s plan. Prior to the 2018-2020 Immigration Levels Plan, the most recent multi-year plan was in 2001-2002. Three- and five-year plans were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s.
A multi-year approach provides the means to set out a longer-term vision for immigration. It supports better planning by securing approvals and investments earlier, providing time for the Department and partners to increase capacity and to prepare to manage higher volumes of applications.
The levels plan is a statement of public policy and is a key tool to communicate the Government’s immigration priorities to partners, including provinces and territories, stakeholders, and the public.
Canada is recognized internationally (e.g., Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) for its approach to managed migration, including specifically its use of immigration levels plans for setting transparent priorities and targets. Canada is among very few countries, like Australia and New Zealand, which have also adopted this approach.
Quebec: Under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec has full responsibility for the selection of immigrants destined to the province (except Family Class and in-Canada refugee claimants). The Accord commits the federal government to take into consideration Quebec’s desired levels in all categories. Quebec’s immigration levels plan is established annually and incorporated in the federal levels plan. On November 1, 2023, Quebec tabled its 2024-2025 immigration levels plan in the Quebec National Assembly. According to the plan, Quebec is targeting a total of 56,500 admissions per year in 2024 and in 2025.
Processing times: Processing times for applications for permanent residence can be affected by a number of factors including available levels space as well as processing capacity within IRCC and its partners. Comparing processing times in August 2022 with the same time period in 2023:
• processing times for Federal Skilled Workers improved from 26 months to 6 months;
• for Canadian Experience Class, processing times improved from 15 to 5 months;
• for Provincial Nominee Program applicants through Express Entry, processing times decreased from 16 months to 8 months;
• and for Rest of Canada Spouse, Partners and Children applicants, processing times decreased from 13 months for inland applications and 22 months for overseas applications in 2022 to 10 months for inland applications and 14 months for overseas applications in 2023.

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