Author: Sergio R. Karas
Canada has reached the end of one immigration era, but not the end of high immigration.
Recent evidence supports a clear conclusion: the post-pandemic experiment with rapidly rising permanent and temporary migration has been reversed. Population growth has slowed dramatically, international student arrivals have collapsed, temporary worker intake has been curtailed, asylum claims have fallen, and permanent resident targets have been reduced from their 2024 peak.
What has ended is the assumption that immigration levels can continually rise irrespective of housing, infrastructure, employment conditions and public confidence. What remains is an immigration system that, even after substantial reductions, continues to admit historically large numbers.
The distinction matters.
Canada admitted 483,640 permanent residents in 2024. The number fell to approximately 393,500 in 2025. The current Immigration Levels Plan sets permanent resident admissions at 380,000 annually from 2026 through 2028, with economic immigration representing almost two-thirds of admissions by 2027.
That is a meaningful reduction from the previously planned trajectory toward 500,000 permanent residents annually. But 380,000 is not a return to low immigration. It is a stabilization at roughly 0.9 per cent of the population — still well above the levels Canada accepted a decade ago.
A more dramatic reversal has occurred among temporary residents.
The federal plan establishes a target of 385,000 new student and worker arrivals in 2026, falling to 370,000 in both 2027 and 2028. The 2026 allocation consists of 155,000 new international students and 230,000 temporary workers. That compares with approximately 687,000 new student and worker arrivals in 2024 and a 2025 target of 673,650.
The results are no longer theoretical. Between January and July 2026, Canada received 28,200 new international students and 113,360 new temporary workers. Combined arrivals were 66 per cent lower than during the same period in 2024. Student arrivals alone were down 80 per cent and worker arrivals 59 per cent.
The international student boom has therefore ended. Ottawa expects to issue up to 408,000 study permits in 2026, but 253,000 are intended for extensions and only 155,000 for newly arriving students. The study permit cap, provincial allocation system, tighter post-graduation work permit rules, higher financial requirements and restrictions on spousal work permits have replaced the previous volume-driven model.
Temporary foreign worker policy has also tightened. Low-wage hiring is generally capped at 10 per cent of an employer’s workforce, and low-wage applications are not processed in census metropolitan areas with unemployment of at least six per cent, subject to sectoral and rural exceptions. Employers must also undertake longer recruitment efforts before seeking a Labour Market Impact Assessment.
The demographic effects are now visible. Statistics Canada estimates that Canada’s annual population growth slowed from 2.8 per cent in 2023–24 to 0.5 per cent in 2025–26 — the lowest percentage increase since 1915–16. The non-permanent resident population declined by 154,614 between July 2025 and July 2026, reaching 2.78 million, or 6.7 per cent of the population. That was down from a peak of 2.98 million, or 7.2 per cent, in October 2024.
The government’s objective is to reduce temporary residents below five per cent of Canada’s population by the end of 2027. It has not yet reached that goal.
Nor are the published temporary resident targets comprehensive caps. They cover certain newly arriving students and workers, but exclude visitors, permit extensions, in-Canada study and work applications, post-graduation work permits and asylum claimants. The headline numbers therefore do not control every source of temporary population growth.
Asylum policy has nevertheless moved in the same restrictive direction. New eligibility rules under Bill C-12 came into force on March 26, 2026. Between January and July 2026, the number of people submitting asylum claims was 69 per cent lower than in the same period in 2024. Monthly claims fell from more than 14,000 during early 2024 to roughly 3,300 to 4,050 between April and July 2026.
Why did the consensus change?
Housing is the most obvious answer. Slower population growth has helped ease some rental markets, but Canada has not solved its underlying supply problem. CMHC estimates that the country must build approximately 417,000 to 469,000 homes annually to restore pre-pandemic affordability by 2036 — leaving a projected annual supply gap of 187,000 to 238,000 homes. CMHC also warns that construction may slow faster than demand, potentially recreating shortages when population growth resumes.
Labour market conditions have changed as well. The emergency shortages that followed the pandemic have given way to a weaker market. In September 2026, employment fell by 68,000, the national unemployment rate rose to 6.5 per cent, and youth unemployment stood at 13 per cent. In those conditions, governments can no longer credibly defend broad temporary worker expansion as though every sector faces the same shortage.
Public opinion has imposed a further constraint. Federal research found that 47 per cent of Canadians believed immigration levels were too high in November 2025, compared with 22 per cent in March 2023. In January 2026, 41 per cent said the government was on the wrong track in managing immigration, while only 26 per cent said it was on the right track.
This does not amount to a rejection of immigration. A major 2026 Environics study found broad support for diversity and concluded that concern about immigration levels should not be confused with opposition to accepting immigrants or to Canada’s changing ethnic composition. The public mood is better understood as a demand for control, competence and credible limits.
There are also strong reasons the pendulum could swing back. Twenty per cent of Canadians were aged 65 or older by July 2026, and population aging has resumed as migration slows. Health care, construction, agriculture and smaller communities will continue to seek workers. Provinces will press for larger nominee allocations, employers will seek exemptions, and future governments may again use immigration to accelerate aggregate economic growth.
The current plan itself preserves that flexibility. It prioritizes economic immigration, expands the Provincial Nominee Program from its reduced 2025 level and includes one-time initiatives to transition up to 33,000 temporary workers and 115,000 protected persons to permanent residence in 2026 and 2027, in addition to regular admission targets.
The most accurate verdict, then, is that Canada has reached the end of the era of immigration growth without effective capacity constraints — not the end of high immigration itself.
The durable policy lesson is not that Canada should close its doors. It is that admissions must be tied transparently to housing construction, labour market conditions, infrastructure, public services and measurable settlement outcomes. Immigration should complement productivity and domestic workforce development, not conceal their weaknesses.
If that principle survives the next labour shortage and the next political cycle, Canada’s immigration reset will mark a genuine structural change. If governments return to using population growth as the easiest substitute for economic reform, the present retrenchment will prove to have been only a pause, and its benefits may evaporate.
Sergio R. Karas, principal of Karas Immigration Law Professional Corporation, is a specialist in Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Law certified by the Law Society of Ontario, Division Chair of the ABA International Law Section, past chair of the Ontario Bar Association Citizenship and Immigration Section, past chair of the International Bar Association Immigration and Nationality Committee, and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.