Carney government aims to cut temporary residents as population figures revised

OTTAWA · The Carney government is pushing to reduce Canada's temporary resident population as new data shows the figure remains stubbornly high. Statistics Canada estimates the number of legal temporary residents is now 2.8 million, down from a peak of three million in late 2024. The government's stated goal is to lower that number to about 2.1 million, or 5 percent of the population, by next year. Prime Minister Mark Carney has repeatedly emphasized "control" as his watchword on immigration policy.

The current tally reflects a significant shift in the composition of temporary residents. The number of foreign students in Canada has fallen to 590,000 from more than one million in the summer of 2024, a drop of 404,000 since January 2023. However, the population of people on work visas, many of whom are former students, has increased by 327,000 over the same period. The number of asylum claimants has more than tripled over the past four years to reach 530,000. This rebalancing comes after what the government describes as an "unprecedented and unplanned immigration surge" under the previous administration. Between 2022 and 2024, new Canadian residents averaged one million per year, which was four times the level of earlier decades. The Trudeau government began scaling back programs in its final year, a process the Carney government has continued, including capping student visas at a level far below recent highs.

The persistence of a large temporary resident population has also led to a revision of recent population statistics. Statscan says its previous figures, which assumed people left Canada immediately after their visas expired, were inaccurate. With better data showing fewer people are departing, a widely reported decline in the Canadian population in 2025 never actually occurred. The agency is still working on measuring how many people remain in the country without legal permission.

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In the coming weeks, Ottawa is set to release its annual immigration plan, including numerical targets for both temporary and permanent immigration. The government has signaled a desire to return to a more selective system for economic immigrants, focusing on education, skills and experience. "The two-thirds or so of immigrants who come through the economic stream should be chosen like applicants to a selective university," one analysis noted, advocating for a return to that approach. Policy experts are calling for a more aggressive reduction in temporary immigration streams, which ballooned under the previous government and were seen as backdoors to permanent status. The C.D. Howe Institute's expert group on immigration suggests aiming for a temporary resident population of just 3 percent of the national population, lower than the government's current 5 percent target. The analysis also argues that the vast majority of future temporary residents should be high-quality visa students or former students on postgraduate work permits.

There are also calls to end the low-wage temporary foreign worker program, except for the long-standing seasonal agricultural worker program. One proposal suggests temporary work visas should no longer be available for jobs paying less than $100,000 a year. The argument is that while Canada may have shortages in some high-skilled fields, there is no generalized shortage of unskilled workers. The government's broader aim is to craft a policy that, in Carney's words, gives the public a sense that it is back in control of who comes to Canada and who stays.

With files from The Globe and Mail