Over half a million new permanent residents expected by end of the year

Canada is on track to welcome more than half a million new permanent residents by year-end if current trends hold, according to Immigration Department figures.

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Canada is on track to welcome more than half a million new permanent residents by year-end if current trends hold, according to Immigration Department figures.

From Jan. 1 to April 30 of this year, 132,160 permanent residents arrived in Canada, a pace that would see 528,640 arrive by the end of 2025.

These figures do not include foreign students, visitors, or migrant workers in Canada, who totalled 3,049,277 as of May 1.

Combined, they account for 18.5 per cent of the private sector workforce.

The data was presented during a Senate Committee on National Finance meeting earlier this month and later obtained by True North.

Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign promise to reduce immigration to “sustainable levels,” the numbers appear to be far exceeding targets previously announced by the federal government.

Carney had proposed to limit the number of temporary workers and international students to five per cent of the national population by 2027, equating to two million individuals based on the current population of 40 million.

Additionally, the proposal includes a restriction on annual permanent resident admissions to one per cent of the population, targeting approximately 400,000 admissions per year by the same date.

However, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada released data in May, which showed that Canada finalized more than 817,000 temporary visa applications in the first four months of 2025 when tallying up both permanent and non-permanent streams.

In addition to the 132,160 new landed immigrants in the first quarter of this year, 194,000 study permits and 491,400 work permits (including extensions) were finalized by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“We finalized 194,000 study permit applications (including extensions) and 491,400 work permit applications (including extensions) from January 1 to April 30, 2025,” wrote immigration officials at the time.

Federal immigration data also revealed that the 2,041,800 applications remain in the backlog inventory.

IRCC said it aims to process 80% of applications within its service standards, but acknowledges it regularly fails to meet this due to demand and “unforeseen circumstances.”