Canada tightens immigration targets for 2027-2029 and opens a new route for selected temporary residents
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
The 2026 federal budget sets yearly limits of 370,000 temporary arrivals and 380,000 permanent admissions through 2029, while offering a pathway for up to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada to become permanent residents by the end of 2027.
Canada’s government announced that, beginning in 2027, it will allow 370,000 new temporary residents each year and keep permanent-resident admissions capped at 380,000 annually through 2029, according to the 2026 federal budget released on Nov. 5, 2026. The plan also opens a pathway for up to 200,000 temporary residents already in the country to obtain permanent residency by the end of 2027.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration said the measures are meant to align immigration with labour-market needs while ensuring that housing affordability, health-care capacity and other public services are not pushed past their limits. The temporary resident quota for 2027 will be divided between 150,000 international students and 220,000 workers, with the worker component consisting of 170,000 arrivals under the International Mobility Program and 50,000 through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
The budget notes that recent declines in new international student arrivals (71% lower than the same period in 2024), worker arrivals (down 57%) and asylum claims (down 68%) support a reduced immigration pace compared with the much higher levels recorded earlier in the decade. Economic immigration is expected to make up about 64% of permanent-resident admissions, with family immigration and refugee categories accounting for the rest.
A separate initiative will convert 100,000 workers eligible for Express Entry or the Provincial Nominee Program to permanent status by the end of 2027, alongside processing space for workers and their families already in Canada and for long-standing humanitarian cases. The budget also extends the foreign-buyer ban on existing homes to Jan. 1, 2029, while exempting new residential properties to encourage new housing construction.