Migrant advocates slammed the change. “We are witnessing one of the most egregious rollbacks of migrant rights in Canadian history,” Syed Hussan, spokesperson for the Migrant Rights Network Secretariat, said in a statement.
“Cutting permanent resident numbers is a direct assault on migrants who will be forced to remain temporary or become undocumented, pushed further into exploitative jobs.”
The office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was not immediately available to comment.
The new immigration targets also mark a shift from the pandemic era when the government loosened rules on temporary residents to help fill labour shortages.
Last year, Canada had planned to bring in 500,000 new permanent residents in 2025 and the same amount in 2026. As of the second quarter of 2024, there were 2.8 million temporary residents, including workers and students, in Canada, according to Statistics Canada.
In an August interview, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told Reuters “Canadians want a(n immigration) system that is not out of control.”
Canada’s Liberal government, trailing in the polls as some legislators seek to oust their leader, has been trying to regulate immigration.
Under Trudeau, Canadian immigration officials have approved fewer visas this year and border officials turned growing numbers of visa-holders away, data obtained by Reuters showed.
The government promises to reduce temporary residents’ share of the population to 5 per cent over three years; it was 6.8 per cent in April.
It also capped the number of international students Canada will bring in and tightened the rules on temporary foreign workers under a program that brings non-Canadians to the country to work on a temporary basis. The program has come under fire for suppressing wages and leaving workers vulnerable to abuse.
