Immigration officials say they don’t track migrants after approving permits

Officials from the Liberal immigration department responsible for granting study and work visas say they don’t track what happens to the migrants after approving them.

Source: Rawpixel

Officials from the Liberal immigration department responsible for granting study and work visas say they don’t track what happens to the migrants after approving them. They claim they do not know whether the migrants are working or overstaying their welcome before issuing more visas.

During a House of Commons’ immigration committee meeting on Tuesday, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner and Conservative MP Costas Menegakis grilled officials from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration on the number of work and study visa permits issued this year and whether or not officials are taking into account the impact of migration on the healthcare system and economy.

Menegakis exposed a discrepancy between what the Liberal government claimed were its migration reduction targets and what officials said during the Tuesday committee.

When asked if the government was on track to meet its stated migration target of reducing the number of temporary residents in Canada to five per cent of the Canadian population, Deputy Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, Harpreet Kochhar, said the target “has always been” set to be met by the end of 2027, and that they are “on track” to meet it.

Menegakis noted that the government’s 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan, released in October of 2024, claimed the target was to “reduce temporary resident volumes to five per cent of Canada’s population by the end of 2026.”

According to Statistics Canada, there were 2,959,825 non-permanent residents in Canada as of April 1, 2025, making up 7.1 per cent of Canada’s population.

Kochhar admitted the immigration department has “no estimation” of how many individuals it brought into the country who no longer have legal status. When pressed again, he said it was “not the information” that the immigration department collects.

Similarly, Kochhar said Citizenship and Immigration doesn’t track whether those with work visas are “actually into particular jobs,” saying it’s the “combined responsibility” of Employment and Social Development Canada, and the “enforcement ward.”

Menegakis also asked if the government conducts an analysis on the cost the “excessive number of immigrants” has on the healthcare system.

“We have not actually gone into those levels of details, but we have consulted with our health care partners, the provinces, the stakeholders, all those who would be involved in both healthcare provision as well as the housing and employment, so we have done extensive stakeholder consultations for that,” Kochhar said. “We continuously advise our Minister about the impact of the immigration, which do bring a lot of benefit and we have been constantly giving her the information.”

Kochhar said his department has been advising Liberal Immigration Minister Lena Diab about the impact the immigration targets will have on housing and health.

Rempel Garner pressured Kochhar, saying the government has already surpassed its target of bringing in 673,650 temporary residents in 2025, but officials disputed her number, saying the government’s targets are just for new migrants.

According to the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada website, the Liberal government has finalized 594,300 study permit applications and 931,300 work permit applications from January 1 to August 31, 2025.

Rempel Garner grilled the officials, asking why the Liberals keep bringing hundreds of thousands into the country while “youth unemployment is at 14.7 per cent,” there are “unprecedented” hospital wait times, and 14.1 per cent overall unemployment.

Pemi Gill, the assistant to the deputy immigration minister for service delivery, told Rempel Garner that the 673,650 resident target was solely those new migrants entering the country in 2025, and that the full finalized applications include individuals already in Canada and those set to enter the following year.

Following a question from Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos to clarify the numbers, Kochhar said that of the 673,650 new temporary residents the Liberals plan to bring in for 2025, 367,750 would be work permits and 305,900 would go to study permits.

Following the committee, the IRCC released data showing 89,430 new international students and 154,515 new work permit arrivals between January and August — a total of 243,945 new temporary residents in the first seven months of the year.

According to the IRCC 2,292,070 work and study permit holders were in Canada as of August 31, 2025.