OTTAWA — Canada needs to make further cuts to the number of temporary residents in the country and generate better tracking data when they leave the country, the head of an expert panel on immigration said. Parisa Mahboubi chairs the C.D. Howe Institute’s immigration targets council, which includes former immigration minister Jason Kenney and top academics in the field in its membership. The council is preparing a submission for the government’s annual immigration levels consultation period. The report comes two years after Canada began moving to cut down on the number of temporary residents, including foreign students and workers, as soaring immigration contributed to significant issues, including housing shortages and overburdened social services. In July, Prime Minister Mark Carney said immigration was too high when he took office in 2025, and specifically blamed a loss of control of the intake of international students and temporary workers. He then claimed his government had “taken back control” of the system. But Mahboubi said Canada is “flying in the dark” when it comes to tracking temporary residents after they arrive. “There is not clear data on the number of visas, how many every year we renew, and that’s another thing that could be challenging in terms of reducing the total population of non-permanent residents,” Mahboubi said. “We don’t have good data on the number of non-permanent residents with expired student visas or work permits exiting the country. So we need better data of that, it’s just an assumption that people will leave when they have no status.” As of June 30, immigration data shows there were 632,000 study permit holders, and 1.5 million temporary work permit holders in Canada. In June 2024, there were more than one million students, and almost 1.2 million temporary workers. But the number of new students and workers arriving has fallen sharply. Between January and June this year, 22,410 new foreign students arrived in Canada, compared to 124,930 in the same period in 2024. There were 98,130 new temporary worker arrivals counted in the first six months of this year, compared to 244,985 in the first six months of 2024. The government’s current goal is to reduce the number of temporary residents to less than five per cent of the total population by the end of 2027. The temporary resident population was more than seven per cent at its peak in October 2024. Statistics Canada estimates the non-permanent resident population is around 2.5 million people as of last spring, about 6.2 per cent of the population. Mahboubi said five per cent should be seen as the ceiling, not the floor, in restoring control over Canada’s immigration system. She said Canada should aim for non-permanent residents to be three to four per cent of the total population, in line with historical averages. Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservative immigration critic, said Thursday that Carney’s claim the system is under control is “slightly detached from the truth.” She said immigration levels, both temporary and permanent, should be tailored to Canada’s ability to provide jobs, housing and health care to newcomers and people who are already here. “We have jobs crises and high unemployment rates in a lot of parts of the country, right? And that’s not fair to anybody,” Rempel Garner said. “It’s not fair to somebody who came to Canada to build a better life. It’s not fair to somebody’s kids that are out of jobs today.” The government has also cut targets for new permanent residents. In 2023, the former Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aimed to admit 500,000 new permanent residents in both 2025 and 2026. But one year later, they cut that goal to 395,000 for 2025 and 380,000 for 2026. But Mahboubi said the 2026 permanent residency target doesn’t capture the full picture as the government announced one-time programs to grant up to around 148,000 people between 2026 and 2027. About 115,000 are protected persons in Canada and up to 33,000 are considered skilled workers. Neither of these programs are included in the broader immigration levels plan. “It’s really difficult to say actually, even for permanent immigration, if we really are correcting the course because we are admitting more than we announce,” Mahboubi said. Rempel Garner also argued that repeated instances of non-citizens being given lighter sentences in order to avoid immigration consequences creates a “two-tiered justice system.” She said she has brought forward dozens of cases where this has happened to the House of Commons and has had lawyers tell her off the record “this is happening all the time.” Generally, if a non-citizen is convicted of a crime that leads to a prison sentence of six months or more they are deemed inadmissible to Canada. There is little public data on how often non-citizens receive lighter sentences to avoid immigration consequences, but the University of Saskatchewan College of Law published a six-year review of the practice in 2019. That study looked at 40 cases where sentences tended to be about six months or had a bottom range of six months. All 40 saw the court issue a sentence of less than six months. The study noted that 19 of the 40 cases used an approach where a sentence was determined and then immigration consequences “tipped the balance in favour of a slight reduction to under six months.” Most cases saw a one-day sentence reduction, but a few were “more significant.” The study also examined 72 cases where a sentence would be “considerably more” than six months. Ten of the examined cases took immigration consequences into account, with only one decision explicitly reducing a sentence by six months due to the likelihood of the offender’s removal from Canada. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 30, 2026. David Baxter, The Canadian Press
