Reduce permanent resident admissions to 200,000 annually by 2029 — consistent with pre-surge historical levels — and hold them there until housing, healthcare, and integration infrastructure genuinely catches up.
Canada admitted 471,550 permanent residents in 2023 — nearly double the historical average of approximately 260,000 per year that held from 2010 to 2019. This was not a gradual increase driven by careful planning. It was a rapid expansion driven by political targets set without corresponding investment in housing, healthcare, schools, or settlement services.
Temporary residents peaked at 6.2% of Canada's total population in 2023 — approximately 2.5 million people holding study or work permits at the same time. This rapid expansion was the single largest driver of rental demand during a period when housing construction was already badly lagging population growth. Shelter costs rose 27.4% between March 2020 and February 2025. The connection between record immigration levels and record housing costs is acknowledged by the government's own housing research.
The government is now cutting. Permanent resident targets have dropped to 395,000 for 2025 and are planned to stabilise at 380,000 a year from 2026 through 2028. IRCC's own annual tracking survey found the share of Canadians saying there are too many immigrants rose from 22% in March 2023 to 54% in November 2024, easing to 47% by November 2025 — roughly doubling in eighteen months, and still near half the country after a year of cuts. A separate 2025 consultation put the figure higher — over 80% of the individual respondents said levels were still too many, and 83% said they should keep decreasing beyond 2027 — but that consultation was an open, self-selected online exercise rather than a representative sample, and we cite it as what engaged respondents told the government, not as a measure of national opinion. The government is moving in the right direction but not far enough, and without an honest public conversation about what sustainable levels actually look like.
This policy is not about who comes to Canada. Canada has always been a country built by immigration and we are proud of that history. This is about how many people can be genuinely supported, housed, employed, and integrated at any given time — and the honest answer is that we significantly exceeded that number between 2021 and 2023, and Canadians are still paying the price.
Compare what happened, what the current government is planning, and what we would do.
Sources: IRCC 2025 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration; 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan; IRCC annual tracking survey (November 2025); IRCC 2025 consultations on immigration levels — final report; Statistics Canada population estimates Q4 2024.
Reduce permanent resident admissions to 200,000 by 2029. Consistent with historical levels Canada maintained successfully before the 2021-2023 surge. We would reach 200,000 annually by 2029 and hold there until objective metrics show the system has caught up.
Integration benchmarks before expansion. We would legislate a requirement that permanent resident targets cannot increase above 250,000 annually unless independent measurement shows the previous cohort has achieved housing affordability and employment outcomes within two years of arrival.
End the international student pipeline to permanent residency. International student programs were designed for education, not as a backdoor immigration pathway. We would close the post-graduation work permit loophole.
Invest the savings in settlement services. With fewer new arrivals, we would redirect federal immigration funding toward language training, credential recognition, and employment placement for those already here.
No net cost: lower admissions reduce processing demand, and this policy directs that capacity toward integration rather than to general revenue. For scale, IRCC's integration spending outside Quebec is $1.46B in 2025–26 — $1.125B for the Settlement Program and $332.6M for the Resettlement Assistance Program — against $5.17B in total planned departmental spending. Both the settlement envelope and the department's total are planned to fall through 2028–29.