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The 3-year Canadian immigration plan that everyone is talking about! Everyone knows what the immigration minister and IRCC publicly announced, but does anyone know what they didn’t tell us? Did you read between the lines? What does this plan and higher immigration numbers mean to you and your family? Is it good, bad, or indifferent? How will it affect IRCC processing times for study permits, work permits, visitor visas and PR applications? How will it affect success & approval rates for overseas embassies? Well, it all depends on which category you are in and where you’re located.
Canada aims to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 potentially in 2025. It aims to continue processing new immigrants at a rate of about 1% of Canada’s total population per year, while it maintains its ranking as a leading refugee resettlement country.
What significance does all this have for applicants inside Canada such as students or workers, overseas applicants, including applicants in the Express Entry pool, business applicants, and asylum seekers?
We will do a deep dive into the Canadian Immigration department’s (IRCC’s) plan for the next 3 years outlining both the upside and downside for potential applicants and how to prepare your own strategy to move to Canada.
As well at the end of our video we will let you know the conclusions you can take away from this and WHAT the government did NOT tell you (intentionally).
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Let’s do a quick recap of all the data we have received from the government before our feedback and what this all means to you. These are the ABC’s of Canadian immigration reported in official statistics:
Quick clarification before we start: When reviewing any stats of IRCC, remember that Economic programs under the IRCC means: Caregivers, Provincial Nominee Programs, Agri-Food pilot, Atlantic Immigration Program, Temporary public policies, Federal Business programs such as self-employed and Startup Visa, and Federal high skilled programs such as Express Entry.
* In 2021, Canada welcomed the most immigrants in a single year in its history, with nearly 406,000.
* In 2021, 81,423 individuals were admitted under the Family Reunification category.
* In 2021, over 191,000 work and study permit holders transitioned from temporary to permanent resident status. Canada processed over 415,000 temporary work permit holders and over 445,000 study permit holders.
* A total of 1,467,333 travel documents (TRV’s) were issued (study permits, visitor visas and eTAs, work permits) of which 813,306 were just eTAs. In total in 2021, 962,506 TRVs and eTAs were issued to visitors.
* In 2021 a total of 445,776 study permit holders entered Canada.
* In 2021, there were a total of 103,552 permit holders through the TFW Program. Under the IMP (LMIA exempt programs), there were a total of 313,294 work permit holders.
* In 2021, IRCC finalized permanent residence applications for nearly 6,000 caregivers and their family members, leading to admissions in 2021 and beyond.
* IRCC continued to process immigrant entrepreneurs through the Federal Business Immigration Programs (Start-Up Visa and Self-Employed) and is addressing the inventory of applications that grew over the pandemic. In 2021, IRCC admitted 565 foreign entrepreneurs and their family members to become permanent residents and launch their businesses in Canada.
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Here are some of their Plans for 2023 and beyond based on what they announced:
* IRCC is pushing through its Digital Platform Modernization (DPM) program (2020–26), a multi-year initiative that will bring the Department and its programs and services all online. They have almost completed most of it this year, but it is still an ongoing project.
* IRCC wants to increase use of AI to process applications. Examples which were not mentioned in detail were Chinook and right now we are seeing inside Canada visitor records (extensions) being processed in 2-4 weeks mainly based on AI processing. More AI processing to be expected as we continue into the new year.
* Humanitarian Programs are a priority for the government, as it was the first item on their plan.
* More French speaking focused sub-programs to be incorporated into all provinces and prioritized by IRCC.
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Here is t a list of the top 10 countries that immigrated to Canada in 2021 and what we believe will happen in the next 1-2 years with these source countries of applicants:
In terms of where applicants are moving to and which regions are nominating or welcoming the most immigrants in Canada: Ontario in first place, BC, and Alberta make up for more than 80-90% of intake of successful applicants under most programs, except PNPs which have their own quota for each province.
Under the Protected persons category (also known as the refugee/asylum category, including H&C), 71,605 successful applications were processed in 2021. If you remove Express Entry and the Quebec categories from the total Economic category PRs accepted in 2021 (successful applications only), it totals 86,785, which is only 22% more than the Humanitarian category – hence indicating the priorities of the immigration policies are split. If Express Entry did not exist and there was not a labour crunch in Canada, without pressure from business owners asking the government to do something, we would expect the economic category to be even lower than the numbers we have seen in the past 2 years.
It includes the Startup Visa and Self-Employed category which had a high target of 1250 applicants in 2021. However, only 565 were processed, meaning only about 45% of the high range target. In 2023 the IRCC has a high range target of 4,000 and based on previous years we can expect 1800 applications to be processed successfully for the upcoming year. It is extremely premature to estimate the 2024 and 2025 levels since we really have to see what they will do this upcoming year to be able to forecast the subsequent two years. The significance of this means: more Federal business immigration applications will be processed, but it also means more people will apply which will in turn increase the # of files they need to process, hence keeping the processing slow. The upside is that based on this number, approx. 26% of the entire Startup Visa backlog will be processed in 2023.
IRCC plans to double the actual processing of applicants for the Atlantic Immigration Program in 2023, we will have to wait and see if they can achieve this. As well, they plan to almost double the PNP processing, meaning they are allocating higher quotas to most provinces to be able to nominate skilled workers, international students, and entrepreneurs based on the province’s priorities (105,000 approx. successful PR applications to be processed in 2023 although only 54,020 were processed in 2021 under this category)
Under the family class, they processed 69,278 successful PR applications in 2021 but only planning to increase this in 2023 to 78,000 as an average – which is very conservative. They are shifting more resources to the parent & grandparent sponsorship category with a target of 28,500 for 2023 although they only processed 11,738 successful applications. This is a huge jump as there is a lot of frustration by Canadian citizens and PR’s about being able to bring in their parents and grandparents to Canada, and of course you know that Canadian citizens are the voters which can make or break this government in future elections.
Bad news for Express Entry applicants: In 2021 the IRCC processed 139,459 successful PR applicants from the Express Entry pool, but in 2023 it only plans 82,800 applicants. Both these figures are besides the temporary public policies such as the TR to PR pathways. This supports our forecast that Express Entry points will remain high, over 480-490 range, and will be targeted towards specific occupations and categories in this upcoming year based on the new NOC code system being rolled out during the month of November 2022. If you’re not already inside Canada or have an offer of employment or being nominated through the provincial programs, your chances just dwindled with the new Canadian government immigration plan.
* There are close to 600,000 international students inside Canada that the government will prioritize to convert to PR after their graduation. There are over 300,000 Ukrainians on work permits inside Canada under the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel (CUAET) and the government is planning specific programs to allow these applicants to convert to PR from inside Canada. The number of Ukrainians is expected to increase to 350,000 or more inside Canada with work permits. Considering these two factors, it seems as though the government’s target of new PRs for 2023 will be mainly made of these 2 categories or at least they will be prioritized within the various immigration programs. What does this mean to all other applicants such as Express Entry, or business categories? You’re at the end of the line if you don’t have an employer sponsoring you or already inside Canada with your entrepreneurial work permit.
* What many people don’t know is that the IRCC is paid by the United Nations for every successful protected person application (i.e. Refugee category) that they process. Hence the reason they are so keen on this category and consider it as a fast-track way of getting paid and keeping up their image internationally as a humanitarian and caring country.
* No clear TR to PR pathway as promised has been announced for international students and workers inside Canada. This is long overdue and considering no new announcement and lowered numbers for Express Entry, how does the government expect to support the growing number of international students being admitted to the country? Injecting $23 billion into schools and related services every year for the economy.
* There has been no initiative or announcement about the caregiver program in Canada. A revamp is long overdue, backlogs are just too long, and it is the most ineffective program out there, hence the Caregiver association of Canada voicing their concerns about the government’s inaction. Canada needs caregivers in huge numbers and the government is not prioritizing this and doesn’t seem to be listening.
* They also forgot to mention that in case they call snap elections anytime from now until 2025, there is a chance they will not control the parliament and hence the government, even as a minority government, therefore all these programs and targets will be in disarray especially from 2024 to 2025. The risk is real, and it exists, don’t underestimate this point.
* Other international crises, can we expect more wars or international humanitarian crises between 2023-2025? We hope not, but definitely possible and a real risk to consider. How will this affect the Canadian government's plans and targets and processing times? A contingency plan is needed and not all these numbers can be achieved as planned.
* Did they forget to mention that they need to find and hire all the new staff they need to process all these applications that they have included in their 3-year plan? What about training? The minister forgot to clarify this for everyone, they’re depending more and more on Artificial Intelligence and computers for the job. There is a labour crunch in the country and there are not enough workers inside Canada to fill all positions and that problem also exists for the Canadian immigration department (IRCC) when finding and recruiting staff.
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* Sitting around the Express Entry pool with less than 480 or 485 points is useless unless you are in a high-demand occupation (typically healthcare, IT, or other support service occupations)
* If you’re a Startup Visa business applicant or Self-Employed person under the Art/Cultural or Sports categories, and already have an application in process, the good news is that you can be processed a bit faster. If you are a new applicant, don’t expect any miracles as the number of files to be processed increases, so do applications. We expect the new pipeline of applications to increase hence keeping the backlog in place for at least another 1-2 years.
* If you’re sitting around overseas waiting to get your PR directly, it’s not going to happen. Your chances of converting to PR are 10x from inside Canada vs outside Canada both on federal, rural/regional, and provincial programs, including temporary public policies. Whether you are planning to come to Canada as a student, worker, or business owner, to have a successful path you need to be inside as soon as possible.
* Family sponsorship and Protected persons & asylum-seeking categories will be on the top of IRCC’s list for priorities for 2023 and beyond until this Liberal government is in power.
* Processing times will improve for inside Canada applications for visitor records, study permit extensions and work permits.
* Processing times for work permits on a global scale will improve.
* There is a lot of uncertainty on visitor visa applications from overseas and we don’t expect a huge improvement right away.
* Skilled immigration streams linked to employer sponsorships, whether PR and work permit or just work permit streams will be prioritized including the Atlantic Immigration Program, caregivers, Provincial Nominee programs, GSS, GTS, LMIA and LMIA exempt streams.
* Family sponsorship processing times will remain a high priority for IRCC through their dedicated departments in Nova Scotia for overseas applicants.
If you’re interested in immigrating to Canada for Studies, Work, Sponsorship, or Business, get a FREE assessment with one of our licensed immigration consultants, we have successfully helped applicants from over 47 different countries! Fill out our form, click here.
If you’re thinking about immigrating to Canada through Investment, Business, Work, Sponsorship, or Studies, you’re at the right place!
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