Canada Immigration and IRCC August 2023-

Canada’s Immigration Levels Plan 2023-2025
Canada Immigration and IRCC 2021-16 August 2023

18 April
Canada must be more audacious with efforts to attract global talent
Our country cannot be allowed to fall even further behind in a global race that will shape the future of the country.
By Creso Sá, Distinguished Professor of Science Policy, Higher Education, and Innovation, and Vice-Dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, U of T
(Policy Options) The continuing growth and remarkably diverse composition of the Canada we all know today is thanks to one main factor: historically high levels of immigration.
A well-established multiculturalism policy, positive public attitudes toward immigration and the lack of meaningful success of anti-immigration politics have contributed to Canada’s continued openness to newcomers.
Springboarding off these realities, the pro-immigration lobby group Century Initiative is advocating for increased immigration levels to reach a total population of 100 million by 2100. That would double current projections for population growth.
However, there have been clear signals – especially over the last year – that attitudes are shifting. Following years of high intake of temporary and permanent residents, perceptions that Canada is accepting too many immigrants have mushroomed.
This should be of grave concern for our collective future. Why? Because Canada is in a global competition for talent.

3 April
A solution proposed for the U.S. but equally valid for Canada
Immigration to address the caregiving shortfall
The positive impacts of immigration on the availability and quality of long-term care are well-documented, particularly as they pertain to nursing homes.
(Brookings) In the upcoming years, a confluence of factors will produce an unprecedented shortfall in the necessary supply of caregivers. If left unchecked, this shortfall will result in a series of harmful economic outcomes—including sharply raised caregiving costs, outsized burdens on informal caregivers, and subpar quality of care. Since demand for care is largely out of policymakers’ control, the most promising way to address these challenges is by expanding the supply of caregivers. And one of the best strategies for expanding the supply of caregivers is through expanded pathways for legal immigrants.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller
On tapping on the brakes, and running from behind
By Paul Wells
His job since last June is to introduce a note of caution, or a symphony, into what had been the most pro-immigration government in generations. Symphonies of caution are all the rage these days; even the prime minister has started to notice there’s something amiss. (I don’t think the text of the linked tweet quite summarizes what Justin Trudeau said, but the clip is worth hearing.)
Since the flow of new Canadians has implications for housing, federalism, and the fortunes of the official opposition, just for starters, it’s become clear that Miller has a mandate to change some policies. Which he’s done, capping international student permits and planning for a gradual cut in temporary residents. We talked about both in our interview
We also caught up on the ambitious reform to the department’s organization that his former deputy minister, Christiane Fox, undertook last year — before she was shuffled yet again in January. (She’s now Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council.)
And I took the opportunity to run a peculiar theory past Miller: that the recent substantial increase in immigration rates was essentially orchestrated by the McKinsey consulting firm and its former top executive, Dominic Barton. I don’t put much stock in the notion, and Miller gives it even less credence, but it led the nightly French-language national news at Radio-Canada for days on end last year, beginning with this story The value of one consulting firm’s federal contracts has skyrocketed under the Trudeau government – McKinsey’s influence over Canadian immigration policy has grown in recent years without the public’s knowledge, according to two sources within IRCC. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. (5 January 2023)

20 March
Motion on Israel-Hamas war will have consequences for asylum seekers in Gaza, minister says
State of Canadian program, which Marc Miller calls a ‘failure,’ could get worse
Miller said the motion has upset Israel’s government and will have consequences.
Israel’s foreign minister said Tuesday that measures outlined in the motion, including the suspension of arms exports to Israel, would undermine his country’s ability to defend itself — and that history would judge Canada harshly.
The government always knew the program to offer asylum to extended family members of Canadians who are in the Gaza Strip could fail, Miller said.
It was designed to offer as many as 1,000 temporary visas to people in the Gaza Strip with extended family in Canada, but the minister warned from the outset that getting people out through the tightly controlled Rafah border crossing would be a challenge.
Only 14 people have been able to complete the visa process and get out through the crossing, which is controlled by Egypt and Israel, and all of them have done it without Canada’s aid.
NDP motion on Palestinian statehood passes after major amendments

6 March
New northern immigration pilot programs aim to ease skilled worker shortage
(CTV) New immigration pilot programs announced this week aim to help rural communities attract skilled labour and encourage French-speakers to settle outside of Quebec.
The new programs were announced Wednesday by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller, and are seen as a step toward creating a permanent rural immigration program.
Both the Rural Community Immigration Pilot and the Francophone Community Immigration Pilot will launch in fall 2024.
“It aims to ensure that rural communities continue to have the ability to access programs that address labour shortages and help local businesses find the workers they need,” the federal government said in a news release Wednesday.
“It will provide pathways to permanent residence for newcomers who can help to overcome critical labour job shortages and want to live long term in these smaller communities.”
The francophone pilot will focus on increasing the number of French-speaking newcomers settling in French-speaking minority communities outside of Quebec “and will help ensure the economic development of Francophone minority communities, while also helping to restore and increase their demographic weight,” the federal government said.

4 March
Quebec irked as Ottawa imposes increase in family unification permits
Canada has a “moral duty” to speed up the processing of family unifications requests for permanent residency in Quebec, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller wrote in a letter to his Quebec counterpart, Christine Fréchette.
Philip Authier
In a letter sent by Miller to Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette Sunday after a long weekend feud on X (formerly Twitter), Ottawa says it has decided to act unilaterally following fruitless attempts to convince Quebec to increase its annual ceiling from the current 10,400.
There is a current backlog of 40,000 files.
“I wish to inform you that I decided to instruct my ministry to process requests for permanent residency in the family unification program who have received a CSQ (Certificat de sélection du Québec) issued by your ministry,” Miller writes. “The total is the equivalent to 20,500 requests as of Jan. 31, 2024.”
He added the processing of these requests will be completed over a period of three years.
Miller justifies the move saying the long wait times to permanent residency in the family unification program “can have a significant impact on families waiting for their loved ones and we have a moral duty to find a solution to this issue.”
Miller notes the wait time in the category of parents and grandparents coming to Quebec is 50 months while it is only 24 months in the rest of Canada.

2 February
Many immigrants leaving Canada within years of arriving: StatCan
(CTV) More than 15 per cent of immigrants decide to leave Canada either to return to their homeland or immigrate to another country within 20 years after admission as permanent residents, according to a new study.
Statistics Canada examined the emigration of immigrants from 1982 to 2017 in the study released Friday.
The study also found that 5.1 per cent of immigrants admitted between 1982 and 2017 emigrated within five years of their admission.
… The study found that emigration is strongly correlated with certain characteristics, such as having children, admission category and country of birth.
The study found that emigration is strongly correlated with certain characteristics, such as having children, admission category and country of birth.
More than 40 per cent of immigrants admitted in the investor category and 30 per cent of those admitted in the entrepreneur category emigrated within 20 years of admission.

22 January
Ottawa announces two-year cap on international student visas
The cap will mean a 35% overall reduction in new study visas though some provinces, including Ontario, will see a reduction of 50% or more
[Immigration Minister Marc Miller] hopes the cap will give the federal and provincial government time to curb a system that he says is taking advantage of high international student tuition while providing, in some cases, a poor education.
Miller says the government will also bar students in schools that follow a private public model from accessing postgraduate work permits as of Sept. 1.
And in a few weeks, open work permits will only be available for the spouses of students enrolled in masters and doctoral programs, as well as professional programs such as medicine and law.

13-16 January
Paule Robitaille: Face aux migrations, surfer sur la vague au lieu de la contrer
Mon souhait (illusoire peut-être) pour 2024 est que nos gouvernements se responsabilisent et se coordonnent intelligemment pour absorber ces étrangers déjà sur notre territoire. Rêve pieux, direz-vous, de voir Québec et Ottawa s’entendre sur ce sujet explosif. C’est pourtant notre avenir qui se joue.
(Blogue CORIM) Le Canada et le Québec sont dans une position privilégiée.
Nous n’avons pas la vulnérabilité géographique ou historique des pays européens ni leur densité de population. De notre côté de l’Atlantique, ce sont les États-Unis qui prennent le plus fort de la vague.
Certes, nous sommes imbriqués dans ce vaste mouvement migratoire. Toutefois, entre deux océans, le Grand Nord et les États-Unis, le Canada peut mieux voir venir. Le pays a l’espace. Notre population vieillit. Le Québec ne fait pas exception à la règle.
Si l’on veut construire de nouvelles centrales électriques, demeurer un joueur économique sérieux, s’occuper de nos personnes âgées, enseigner à nos enfants, il faudra beaucoup plus de bras, de cœurs et de cerveaux.
Bien sûr, les enfants d’immigrants augmenteront le nombre d’élèves dans nos écoles. Les parents s’ajouteront aux listes d’attente des médecins. Mais quand tous les boomers ne seront plus, les rejetons de ces immigrants devenus Canadiens et Québécois assureront la relève.

Tasha Kheiriddin: Immigration policy could backfire on Liberals
Even 62 per cent of current immigrants think Canada is letting in too many people.
Canada’s immigration policies are damaging the economy. That’s the finding of Canada’s top bank economists, who issued a dire warning to the federal government. By admitting 455,000 new permanent residents and more than 800,000 non-permanent residents last year, Canada is on the brink of a recession, or worse. “I’ll put it bluntly: We’ve fallen into the population trap,” said Stéfane Marion, chief economist at National Bank of Canada. An increase in the standard of living is no longer possible because “you don’t have enough savings to stabilize your capital to labour ratio.
We also learned that the government was warned two years ago by its own officials about high immigration causing a housing shortage — and ignored those warnings.

Minister presents plan to increase francophone immigration outside Quebec
“It takes attraction, jobs, integration at the school level,” Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller says. “But it also takes money.”
Ottawa announced on Tuesday that it wanted to launch a new program to support French-speaking immigration. “The new Francophone Immigration Support Program will fund innovative projects to eliminate barriers to Francophone immigration,” it said in a statement.
The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada (FCFA) said it had long requested the creation of such a program.
Canada may cap temporary residents over housing strain, immigration minister says
Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged that the influx of non-permanent residents has added to Canada’s housing crisis and says the federal government is considering a cap, something critics say could hurt the economy and create a stigma against immigrants.
Ottawa may ‘rein in’ temporary resident numbers as housing concerns intensify, minister says
Immigration minister says options include reforming permits, capping intake of non-permanent residents
(CBC) Immigration Minister Marc Miller says he’ll be scrutinizing the number of international students and other non-permanent residents coming into Canada, as political tension builds around the interplay between housing affordability and immigration.
Federal government looking for ways to balance immigration and services, says minister
(CBC) Rosemary Barton speaks with Immigration Minister Marc Miller about how the number of non-permanent residents in Canada is putting a strain on housing and health care and what the government is going to do to balance population growth with services needed.
In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live, Miller said the relationship between housing and immigration is complex, and it was discussed around the cabinet table when it came to setting targets for the number of people coming in to Canada.
“Housing has and continues to be a concern, acutely so now in a post-COVID scenario, with the increase in interest rates, with supply challenges, but also just affordability challenges”
‘A system that has gotten out of control’: Immigration minister to consider cap on international students in Canada
Immigration Minister Marc Miller says in the next few months he’ll be looking at the possibility of putting a cap on the number of international students living in Canada, but he wouldn’t say how great a reduction the government is planning on making.
In an interview airing Sunday, the minister told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos this is a conversation the federal government will need to have with provincial governments “to make sure that the provinces that have not been doing their jobs actually rein in those numbers on a pure volume basis.”
“That volume is disconcerting,” Miller said, in reference to the number of international students in Canada. “It’s really a system that has gotten out of control.”

10 January
Temporary immigration program for those wanting to flee Gaza and come to Canada opens
A new federal program will allow 1,000 Palestinian family members of Canadian citizens to seek refuge here for three years. But there’s no guarantee refugees will be able to leave Gaza, Immigration Minister Marc Miller tells Power & Politics.

2023

2 November
Support for immigration fades in Canada
(GZEROmedia) While political tension around immigration in Canada is nowhere near as intense as in Washington, there are signs that may soon change. Canadians’ traditionally strong support for high levels of immigration is slipping, according to a long-running tracking poll, putting pressure on Ottawa to stop letting so many people in.
Forty-four percent of Canadians now think that levels are too high, up from 27% last year, the largest change in sentiment that pollster Environics has observed in more than 40 years of tracking the issue.
The Trudeau government has dramatically increased immigration numbers, last year announcing plans to admit as many as 500,000 people, up from 300,000 a year when Trudeau took power in 2015. Those numbers are on top of record numbers of foreign students, temporary foreign workers, and an unknown number of undocumented workers.
There has long been a broad consensus in Canada about the economic benefits of immigration, but as housing becomes more costly – a recent report says Canada needs 3.45 million new homes – the consensus is eroding. Housing costs have skyrocketed and are expected to get worse. Increased borrowing costs are causing “payment shock” when mortgages come up for renewal and are also making new housing projects more expensive for developers.
On Wednesday, Immigration Minister Marc Miller revealed that the Canadian government intends to stop increasing the number of newcomers, leveling them out at 500,000 a year. Miller said earlier in the week that Canada would pay an economic price if it reduced immigration levels.
1 November
Federal government to level out number of new permanent residents in Canada in 2026
(Canadian Press) Canada will see 485,000 new permanent residents next year, and 500,000 the year after. Immigration Minister Marc Miller says 60% will be economic migrants, and answering concerns about housing, says 30% are actually already in Canada.
[Recent] increases have come under increasing scrutiny, as the government has faced greater pressure to address a national lack of available and affordable housing.
Miller said those concerns are balanced against the contributions immigrants make to Canada’s economic growth and labour market.
Increasing the number of new permanent residents doesn’t create a direct proportional demand for housing, Miller said. Just as new immigrants may need housing, they are also crucial in building new housing stock.

Quebec announces their Immigration Plan for 2024 and 2025
Prime Minister François Legault, the Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration, Christine Fréchette and the Minister of the French Language, Jean-Francois Roberge, announced the details of the Quebec Immigration Plan for 2024 and the final guidelines for the Immigration Plan in Quebec for 2024 and 2025.
In 2024 and 2025, the Quebec government plans to increase the number of French-speaking immigrants and also increase the knowledge of French among immigrants through the implementation of “Francisation Quebec”.
These measures include selecting candidates that are proficient in French, encouraging younger immigrants to come to Quebec to limit the effects of the aging population of the province, and promote the reception, integration, and retention of immigrants in all regions of the province.

29 September
The repair job at Immigration
The department’s top bureaucrat answers a critical report, with rare candour
Paul Wells
Seven months ago Neil Yeates, a retired former deputy minister of immigration, submitted a report on the organization of the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to the current deputy minister, Christiane Fox.
Yeates’s 28-page report was blunt, plainspoken, critical but constructive. It said “the current organizational model at IRCC is broken.” At a time of global upheaval and dizzying growth in immigration levels, the department that decides who gets into Canada was no longer “fit for purpose,” he wrote. It was time for “major change.” When? “[T]he advice is to proceed now.”
On Thursday, a copy of Yeates’s report landed in my email inbox.
On Thursday night, Christiane Fox told me she is implementing many of Yeates’s recommendations, and described for me her plans for the department with a level of detail and candour I almost never see in today’s Ottawa.

25 September
Foreign students being tricked into thinking they can get permanent residency by studying in Canada, experts warn
(Globe & Mail) A report by Senators Ratna Omidvar, Hassan Yussuff and Yuen Pau Woo about the federal international student program warns that there are not enough permanent residence spots to cater to the rising number of these students coming to Canada, and calls on Ottawa to make clear that the process of staying permanently is highly competitive.
Although attending a Canadian college or university can help a foreign student gain permanent residence here, success is not assured. Under a program known as Express Entry, Canada’s immigration system assigns scores to would-be permanent residents based on their work experience and other factors, and only the highest ranked are invited to apply.
The senators’ report also calls for federal action to stop education consultants – who are paid by Canadian colleges to recruit students abroad – from overselling the ease of getting Canadian work permits after graduation.

28 August
Is Canada Really So Immigrant-Friendly?
Trudeau’s ambitious plan to increase immigration is facing pushback from the left and right.
By Claire Porter Robbins, a journalist in Calgary, Alberta, and the founder of Btchcoin News.
(Foreign Policy) …in November, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to expand immigration, it seemed like a politically savvy move. Since Trudeau took office in 2015, immigration has already increased from around 300,000 to 400,000 new residents per year. Now, Canada plans to welcome 500,000 permanent residents each year by 2025. Laid out as a way to build up the Canadian economy, which faces labor shortages and a declining birth rate, the plan prioritizes bringing in skilled immigrants. It was met with praise from major corporate advocacy groups, such as the Business Council of Canada.
Ten months later, Trudeau’s plan is facing skepticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Criticism from the far right is no surprise. But as the government has struggled to integrate and support migrants, the prospect of bringing in significantly more of them has led immigration experts and advocates to air grievances about what they see as the administration’s failings in related sectors, notably refugee resettlement and housing.
Meanwhile, public opinion on immigration has started to shift. As cost of living and housing prices stay stubbornly high, anti-immigration sentiment—long boiling—may rise to the surface.

27 August
Canada’s underemployed economic immigrants: How to stop wasting talent
Parisa Mahboubi, senior policy analyst and Tingting Zhang, junior policy analyst, C. D. Howe Institute
Canada consistently fails to fully utilize immigrants’ skills, limiting its efforts to address labour-market needs and imposing a loss on the economy.
(Globe & Mail) Economic immigration is Canada’s largest and most popular admission category. To make such immigration more responsive to labour-market needs, Canada recently launched category-based selection that prioritizes in-demand occupations facing shortages, such as those in health care and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
However, once they get to Canada, foreign-educated immigrants, particularly recent immigrants, often encounter difficulties finding employment that aligns with their qualifications, and experience persistent skills underutilization.

Integrity of immigration system at risk as international student numbers balloon, minister says
Guest host Evan Dyer speaks to international students and experts about the government’s suggestion that a surge in international students is in part to blame for Canada’s housing crunch, then discusses so-called bad actors in Canada’s higher education system with Immigration Minister Marc Miller.
(CBC) Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the concern around the skyrocketing number of international students entering Canada is not just about housing, but Canadians’ confidence in the “integrity” of the immigration system itself.
Canada is on track to welcome around 900,000 international students this year, Miller said in an interview that aired Saturday on CBC’s The House. That’s more than at any point in Canada’s history and roughly triple the number of students who entered the country a decade ago.
That rapidly increasing number of international students gained increased attention this week when the country’s new housing minister, Sean Fraser, floated the idea of a possible cap on the number of students Canada brings in.
Miller said there were a number of illegitimate actors who were trying to exploit the system, which was eventually having a negative effect on people trying to come to Canada for legitimate reasons. Miller referred to one high-profile instance (new window) last month of an international student found sleeping under a bridge.
He said he would not get involved with naming and shaming, but said his focus was on some private colleges. Work would need to be done to tighten up the system, he said, to make sure institutions actually had space and suitable housing for people who are being admitted. Miller also said closer collaboration with provinces was key to solving the problem.
International students say they want to study in Canada, but staying is a problem if they can’t find housing