A Feb. 26 PBO report titled Demographic Implications of the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan projects that Canada’s total population will remain flat in 2026 due to a decline in the non-permanent resident population. This would mark the second year without overall population growth.
The PBO analysis projects that the share of non-permanent residents will fall below five per cent of this country’s population by the end of 2027, meeting the federal government’s goal only one year later than originally planned. This is a drop from its 2024 peak of 7.6 per cent.
Kwan argued that communities and sectors across Canada have already been seriously affected by the policy with post-secondary institutions struggling due to international student caps, employers losing workers as permits expire without clear pathways to permanent residence, and labour shortages in critical areas such as health care due to major reductions to the Provincial Nominee Program.
Kwan said the Liberal government is “reinforcing harmful narratives that blame immigrants” for the housing crisis, and not standing up against “anti-immigration political pressure” coming from the Conservatives and from the United States.
“Canada needs stable, evidence-based immigration planning developed through meaningful consultation with communities, provinces, and stakeholders—not sudden policy reversals that create uncertainty, fuel anti-immigrant sentiment, and undermine our economic and humanitarian commitments,” she said.
The Conservative and Bloc Québécois critics did not respond to The Hill Times‘ request for a comment.
In 2018, 3.3 per cent of Canada’s population were temporary residents. By 2024, that number had more than doubled to 7.5 per cent. In its immigration levels plan, the government said this “unprecedented rate of growth” put pressure on housing supply, the health-care system, and schools and said this is “no longer sustainable.”
The government’s 2026-2028 plan has set annual permanent resident admissions at 380,000 people per year, which represents a roughly 20-per-cent reduction compared to record-high 2024 levels. This plan to “stabilize” targets was reinforced in the 2025 budget.
The plan also aims to reduce the target for new temporary resident admissions from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026, and down to 370,000 in 2027 and 2028. According to the government, the cost of this measure is $168.2-million over four years, starting in 2026-27, and $35.7-million ongoing.
“The surge of population in 2022-2024 caught Canadians off guard, and this occurred as inflationary pressures mounted,” said Dan Hiebert, a University of British Columbia professor studying migration.
“The calls for more people were quickly replaced with the opposite—calls to reduce immigration. IRCC [Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada] responded by promising to reduce both temporary and permanent visas. The result is a period where more visas are expiring than being granted, and population growth has temporarily stopped,” he explained.
Hiebert said this trend is scheduled to last through the whole of 2026 and 2027, by which time the temporary resident population will have declined to five per cent of the total population.
“The adjustment phase will end and migration and immigration will return to something like more familiar levels,” he said.
Feds use ‘mathematical trick’ to show success of immigration plans: Prof. Veronis
While the PBO report shows that the government is on track with its plans to slow population growth after a surge in temporary workers and international students in recent years, the policy’s long-term impacts are not measured, and the fate of the more than a million temporary residents remains uncertain, say some observers.
Luisa Veronis, associate professor and research chair in immigration at the University of Ottawa, told The Hill Times in an March 10 interview that the report shows the government is trying to “restabilize the numbers, but they’re doing a mathematical trick.”
“There is a double trick,” Veronis said after analyzing the findings of the PBO report.
“The first is reducing the number of temporary migrants, which is one of the major issues these policy changes are trying to address—bring the share of temporary migrants to under five per cent of the population,” she explained.
“Here, the trick is to reduce this number by converting them to permanent status. So they are still here, but they are no longer temporary, so we have reduced the number of temporary migrants just by changing their status,” she said.
According to IRCC data, 48 per cent of new permanent residents admitted in 2025 were previously international students or temporary workers.
The other “trick” is related to population growth, Veronis argued. She said that the current policy changes are trying to “overcorrect” the peak of the population growth by reducing the number of newcomers—both permanent and temporary residents—dramatically.
“As a result, we now have near-zero growth for the 2026-2028 period. But you could also interpret this as spreading the growth that already took place over a few years, so we have averaged the growth over several years. It looks like we have zero growth because we compensate for the higher growth that already happened. So it is not really zero growth if you were to turn it into an average over the longer period,” she said.
When asked to respond to Veronis’ analysis that the department was using a “trick” to stabilize the numbers, IRCC spokesperson Matthew Krupovich said, “It is important to note that Canada has long prioritized pathways to permanent residence for people already living and working here.”
Temporary resident arrivals fell by more than half in 2025, Krupovich told The Hill Times in a March 12 email, adding that the government’s targets for temporary and permanent residents were developed in tandem, with a focus on transitioning to permanent residence those who are already in Canada with needed skills and experience.
“This approach allows Canada to retain workers who are talented, educated, and integrated into Canadian society,” he said.
“Many are already in the workforce, helping support the economy in key sectors, and contributing to communities across the country, including outside major cities. And by transitioning temporary residents who are already here, we are limiting additional pressures on housing and public services.”
The PBO report shows that annual permanent resident admissions increased by nearly 80 per cent between 2015 and 2024—from 272,000 to 484,000 people—as immigration-level plans raised targets. This played a larger role in population growth, but a significant proportion of those permanent resident admissions represented individuals already in Canada, according to the report.
The PBO report highlights that the government’s plan also includes two one-time initiatives in 2026 and 2027 that would transition an additional 148,000 people already in the country. That includes 115,000 people with recognized protected person status and their dependents, and 33,000 temporary workers “who have established strong roots in their communities.”
“While these transitions temporarily raise total PR admissions above the stated annual targets, they reflect changes of residency status rather than new inflows, and thus would have no direct impact on overall population growth,” reads the report.
Veronis also underlined that while the PBO report might indicate the government has been successful in its goals by the numbers, there are still gaps in the implementation of the immigration cuts, as well as unanswered questions about the fate of migrants with temporary status overall.
“What happens to the people who fall through the cracks?” she said, citing asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be approved, and thousands of temporary migrants including workers and students who may not have a pathway to permanent residency.
More than 1.8 million temporary resident permits are set to expire by the end of this year, according to IRCC data reported by City News.
Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, called the government’s reduction plan a “mass self-deportation policy,” and said the PBO report on demographics does not address the “deeper damage” the policy causes.
“It does not capture what happens when millions of people are pushed toward insecurity through permit expiries, status loss, and blocked pathways to permanence, while many are effectively forced to self-deport. That means job loss, family separation, greater exploitation, and fear for people who were told there was a future for them here,” he told The Hill Times.
Hussan argued that the PBO report looks at overall population growth without differentiating between temporary and permanent residents, and said that putting the two in the same bucket distorts the projections and impact on areas like housing and health care, which is part of the government’s justification for the reductions.
“If you add non-permanent residents into the population growth, then the snapshot of the population today actually doesn’t project a future at all, because these are people who are primarily on work or study permits, refugee claimants, most of them will leave,” he explained.
“They don’t have a path to permanent residency. Potentially, a new group of people might be brought in. They will never actually have a similar impact to somebody like a citizen being born here, who will be here for most, if not all, of their lives.”
Hussan said the report falls short in examining the broader economic implications, such as the potential loss of workers, consumers, and taxpayers if immigration levels decline.
