Canada | 2025-27 Immigration Levels Plan

The Canadian government announced the 2025-27 Immigration Levels Plan, forecasting reduced targets across multiple immigration streams over the next two years.

Key Points:

• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is implementing new measures to reduce permanent resident targets, including:
  • Reducing permanent residents from 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025.
  • Reducing permanent residents from 500,000 to 380,000 in 2026.
  • Setting a target of 365,000 permanent residents in 2027.
• For the first time ever, the Levels Plan includes controlled targets for temporary residents, specifically international students and foreign workers:
  • The temporary population will decline by 445,901 in 2025 and 445,662 in 2026, then will increase by 17,439 in 2027.
• Other measures include transitioning more temporary residents who are already in Canada as students and workers to permanent residents, focusing on long-term economic growth and key labor market sectors (such as health and trades) and strengthening Francophone communities outside Quebec and supporting their economic prosperity.

Additional Information: Earlier this year, IRCC announced a plan to decrease the number of temporary residents from 6.5% of Canada’s total population to 5% by 2026. The Levels Plan supports these efforts to reduce temporary resident volumes in conjunction with the temporary resident reduction measures announced in September and over the past year. Officials stated that the temporary population will decrease over the next few years as significantly more temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents or leave the country compared to new ones arriving.

The government has also implemented additional reforms, including raising the cost-of-living financial requirement for study permit applications and tightening eligibility requirements for temporary foreign workers to reach the targeted decrease of the temporary resident population to 5% over the next two years.

BAL Analysis: The Levels Plan is expected to result in a marginal population decline of 0.2% in both 2025 and 2026, before returning to a population growth of 0.8% in 2027. The transitional Levels Plan is designed to alleviate pressures on housing, infrastructure and social services and pause population growth in the short term to achieve well-managed, sustainable growth in the long term.

This alert has been provided by the BAL Global Practice Group.

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