Canada faces demographic and economic challenges due to our aging population, which immigration can help address. This need has been exacerbated by the economic uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canada continues to welcome newcomers, in particular economic immigrants, through multiple pathways. These newcomers bring the skills our economy needs to help recover and keep growing as we move forward.
The 2022-2024 Immigration Levels Plan sets out a path for responsible increases to immigration targets to help the Canadian economy recover from COVID-19, with about 60% of admissions to come from the economic category by 2024.
Immigration is a central pillar of Canada’s economic recovery and future growth. Economic immigrants are educated, fill targeted labour and skills shortages, contribute to innovation, workplace diversity, and are able to integrate into the Canadian labour market with ease.
Canada has implemented several pilots and programs to support rural and remote regions through economic immigration, while supporting settlement and integration to help ensure newcomer success.
Supplementary Messages
The 2022-2024 Immigration Levels Plan sets an ambitious target for immigration, aiming to welcome 431,645 permanent residents in 2022; 447,055 in 2023 and 451,000 in 2024. It recognizes immigration as a key driver of economic recovery and future growth, with close to 60% of its projected admissions in the economic category.
Canada’s suite of economic programs, including regional and sectoral pilots, allows for the selection of immigrants, across a range of occupations and skill levels, at the national and provincial/territorial levels.
Applications in our inventories for permanent residence in all lines of business continue to be processed. Throughout the pandemic, the Department has taken extraordinary and innovative steps to meet economic immigration levels:
Exceeding pre-pandemic processing rates – surpassed the 2021 admissions target, welcoming 405,332 permanent residents (roughly 62% were economic class admissions)
Pivoted to deliver many services remotely
Implemented new ways to grant new permanent resident status, including facilitating virtual landings for in-Canada applicants
Implemented increases in the additional points for French-speaking and bilingual candidates under Express Entry
Introduced the time-limited Temporary Pathway to Permanent Residence to help retain the talent of temporary residents already here in support of economic recovery
Supported settlement service providers to adapt and continue supporting newcomers throughout the pandemic
Immigration contributes to growth
Immigration (permanent and temporary) is a significant driver of population growth, accounting for close to 86% of the population growth in 2019. It is anticipated to increase to 100% by the 2040s.
With an aging population and declining fertility rates, plus labour and economic challenges, Canada will depend even more on immigration in the long term.
Outcomes of economic immigrants
Economic principal applicants’ employment earnings are well above the average for all immigrants, and even surpass the Canadian average shortly after landing.
In more recent years, with the exception of 2020, the gap in employment rates between immigrants and the Canadian-born had begun to narrow. In 2021, 79.1% of immigrants aged 25-54 were employed, compared to 83.9% of the Canadian-born.
In 2019, the labour market performance of immigrants in Canada was stronger than the average reported for other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for both employment rates and earnings.
Permanent resident processing
While my Department continues to accept and process permanent resident applications, service disruptions and travel restrictions due to COVID-19 have had an impact on processing times.
In the drive to process as many applications as possible in 2021 to compensate for these shortfalls, IRCC focused on processing applicants who were already in Canada.
As a result, IRCC has seen significant growth in the overall size and age of its application inventories across economic programs, including the federal high-skilled programs in Express Entry.
In order to reduce the backlog and improve client experience with no impact on admissions, the Department has temporarily paused sending invitations to apply to candidates in the Express Entry pool, with the exception of the Provincial Nominee Program.
If pressed: Regarding the pause on Federal High Skilled Programs
The pause on invitation to apply rounds for Federal High Skilled Programs (Federal Skilled Worker Program, Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Trades Program) is necessary in order to address the existing inventory of applications and to return to normal service standards within the Express Entry system.
The pause will continue until the end of March 2022, at which time the Department will re-evaluate whether to extend the pause or resume invitations to apply for new clients.
Pausing invitations to apply for permanent residence through Federal High Skilled streams doesn’t change Canada’s commitment to welcoming newcomers who bring the skills our economy needs to grow and to thrive.
The Department continues to finalize applications for skilled workers and the pause on invitations will have no impact on the number of new skilled worker permanent residents arriving in Canada.
Processing productivity continues to be challenged by factors such as increased complexities of processing files as well as aging and paper-based files. IRCC’s processing network has worked diligently to manage processing issues, including the increased level of application intake and management of client communications on Canada’s evolving COVID-19 posture and reopening plan.
Additional funding of $85M, as announced in January 2022, will help return to processing service standards in various programs by year end. This investment will support the processing of 147,000 permanent residence final decisions by March 2022 and the expansion of the digital application portal by summer 2022.
Outcomes of new measures attracting individuals across a range of occupations and skill levels
The time-limited Temporary Pathway to Permanent Residence which targeted recent international graduates, health care workers, and other workers in essential occupations, saw over 91,000 applications. Uncapped dedicated streams for French-speaking and bilingual temporary residents were included that resulted in around 7,000 applications. Close to 24,000 new permanent residents were admitted through this pathway in 2021, with about 8,000 more to February 2022. We aim to welcome 40,000 individuals through this pathway in 2022 and 32,000 in 2023.
In 2021, the top five occupations were: food service supervisors (1,520), transport truck drivers (1,320), administrative assistants (1,005), retail trade supervisors (802) and home support workers (782). Workers with experience in health care, agriculture, tourism, and construction occupations were also admitted.
The three-year Agri-Food Pilot, launched in 2020, provides a pathway to permanent residence for full-time, year-round workers in specific agriculture industries and occupations. In 2021, 187 new permanent residents to Canada were welcomed through the pilot.
The five-year Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots, introduced in 2019, test a new two-step selection approach to provide a clear and direct pathway to permanent residence for caregivers from abroad and their families, while continuing to provide Canadian families with a range of caregiving options. In 2021, there were roughly 2,800 new permanent residents through these caregiver pilots.
The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot, introduced in 2019, uses a community-based, economic development approach with the aim to support 11 partner rural communities located in northern Ontario and western Canada. In 2021, there were 556 admissions.
Since 2017, the Atlantic Immigration Pilot brought over 12,700 new permanent residents, over 4,900 in its final year, to Atlantic Canada (as of January 31, 2022). Participating employers have made over 11,000 job offers in key sectors, including health care, accommodations, food services and manufacturing.
According to the IRCC evaluation of the Pilot, over 90% of applicants were still living in the region after one year; a high retention rate when compared to other economic immigration programs.
The Pilot was very well received in the region to attract and retain skilled immigrants to Atlantic Canada, and was transitioned to a permanent program on January 1, 2022.
The Provincial Nominee Program is a jointly administered immigration program which provides provinces and territories with an opportunity to address their specific economic development needs while distributing the benefits of economic immigration across all regions of Canada.
The Provincial Nominee Program enables participating provinces and territories to create streams to nominate immigrants who meet local labour market and economic needs, who have skills and experiences that will increase their likelihood of residing and economically establishing in their region, and who have an intention to reside in their province or territory.
From 2019 to 2021, provinces and territories received additional Provincial Nominee Program allocations aimed at increasing transitions to permanent residence for in-Canada temporary workers to meet the labour market needs at the intermediate skill level “NOC C Initiative”.
Early data following the end of the initiative indicates that the Provincial Nominee Program will see an in an increase in admissions at this skill level; however it is too soon to measure this increase because of processing times and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initiative also succeeded in increasing the number of pathways to permanent residence for intermediate skilled workers, as all eleven jurisdictions that participate in the Provincial Nominee Program now have a stream for intermediate-skilled workers.
Francophone immigration outside Quebec
Immigration helps maintain the vitality of official language minority communities in Canada; the Government of Canada has a 4.4% target for Francophone immigration outside of Quebec by 2023.
Express Entry is a key driver of Francophone immigration outside Quebec. An increase in additional points resulted in 5.2% of invitations issued to French-tested candidates in 2020 (compared to only 2.9% in 2017), representing the majority of French-speaking federal admissions, making Express Entry the most promising tool to increase French-speaking admissions outside Quebec.
The May to November 2021 Temporary Pathway to Permanent Residence pathway resulted in some 7,000 applicants from French-speaking and bilingual temporary residents, many of whom will obtain permanent residence in 2022.
