Canada's new immigration plan: Who wins, and who is losing out

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Lena Diab is pictured last month. She tabled Bill C-3 in June to make the country's citizenship law Charter-compliant.

Prime Minister Mark Carney's latest immigration levels plan aims to balance attracting top talent to address Canada's evolving economic needs and honoring its humanitarian pledge to refugees and family reunifications.

However, with fewer spots available and processing resources maxed out, officials must rush to create spaces in some programs while cutting others. This challenge is especially tough given the government's goal to increase skilled immigration during a time of great economic uncertainty.

On Wednesday, the Immigration Department released the breakdown of the 2026-2028 targets for individual permanent and temporary residence programs. This happened a day after the budget showed some highlights of the levels plan. The appendix reveals who wins and loses in the numbers game.

Canada has plans to accept 380,000 new permanent residents each year for the next three years. This will increase the proportion of newcomers in the economic class from 59% in 2025 to over 64%. The share of spouses and parents/grandparents will go down from 24% now to 21%. The percentage of protected persons given asylum and resettled refugees is likely to drop from 14.8% to 13%.

Spots for permanent residents in humanitarian programs, including those for Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, will also slowly decrease from 2.5% to 1.3%.

The government plans to reduce the influx of foreign workers from 367,750 to 230,000 in 2026 followed by a further decrease to 220,000 in 2027 and 2028. New international student arrivals will see a substantial reduction too dropping from 305,900 this year to 150,000 for the next three years.

The new levels plan has some clear beneficiaries:

Provincial immigration programs

The economic class permanent resident spots will rise a bit from 232,150 this year to 244,700 in 2028. Provinces and territories will get a bigger share of this total through provincial nomination programs (PNP) growing from 55,000 to 92,500.

This program lets provincial governments pick potential permanent residents who best fit their regional economic and job market needs.

"We're not sure how the provinces will give out those PNPs, or what categories and jobs they'll focus on," said Cedric Marin, an immigration lawyer in Ottawa who speaks for the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association. "But it's good news."