Canada will hold its annual permanent resident admissions at 380,000 for 2027 to 2029 and create a time limited pathway to permanent residence for up to 200,000 people already in the country in 2027, the federal immigration department said alongside Budget 2026.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada published the 2027 to 2029 Immigration Levels Plan with the budget, setting permanent resident admissions at 380,000 a year and new temporary resident arrivals at 370,000 a year for each of the three years.
The temporary intake, the department said, is to include 220,000 new workers and up to 150,000 new international students annually, while economic class admissions are to remain above 64 per cent of the total. Francophone immigration outside Quebec is targeted at 9.5 per cent of admissions in 2027, rising to 12 per cent in 2029.
Details of the one-time pathways
The new, time limited measure is intended to move up to 200,000 people who are already living in Canada to permanent resident status in 2027 through two cohorts. Officials said up to 100,000 places would be reserved for workers and their families, selected with provincial partners through expanded Provincial Nominee Program allocations and federal streams. Up to 100,000 places would be available on humanitarian and family reunification grounds.
Officials told reporters the humanitarian cohort includes almost 32,000 applicants from Hong Kong and about 19,000 from Ukraine. The budget commits C$302 million over four years from 2027 to 2028 to support the transitions to permanent residency, the finance documents show.
A calculation from the published streams and earlier measures suggests combined permanent resident admissions in 2027 could reach about 657,250, once the one time streams and an earlier initiative that added almost 80,000 places are counted. That figure is not presented in a single headline number by the department.
Government defence and opposition response
Prime Minister Mark Carney said the levels were “in line with sustainable immigration” and said his government had “taken back control of immigration”, pointing to declines since 2024 of 71 per cent in international students, 57 per cent in temporary foreign workers and 68 per cent in asylum seekers. The government also said the 380,000 target is about 0.9 per cent of Statistics Canadas latest population estimate, rising to about 1.5 per cent with the one time streams.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking in Brampton on Friday, criticised the plan, saying Canada cannot absorb 657,250 people next year and adding, “Our youth are desperate. They can’t find homes. They can’t find jobs.” His remarks are a political assessment rather than an independent finding about capacity.
The government said it aims to reduce the share of temporary residents in the population to 5 per cent by the end of 2027 from a peak of 7.4 per cent in October 2024. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Canada’s population is now growing at its slowest annual rate in more than a century.
Officials cautioned that take up of the 200,000 places will depend on processing capacity and co operation from provinces. The department has not published a detailed eligibility test for the workers cohort, and the extent to which the full allocation will be used is therefore uncertain, officials said.
Implementation will require operational planning for processing the one time cohorts, co ordination with provincial nomination programmes and the allocation of the budgeted support. The budget and levels plan set the intended targets and resources, but final outcomes in 2027 will depend on those practical steps and on decisions by potential applicants and provincial partners.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the finance department framed the package as balancing longer term permanent admissions with a smaller annual intake of new temporary residents, while providing a concentrated route to status for selected people already living in Canada in 2027.
