Pathways to humanitarian permanent residency tighten as Ottawa focuses on economy

The new Canadian passport is unveiled at an event at the Ottawa International Airport in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

OTTAWA — The federal government is cutting the number of spots available in its refugee humanitarian and permanent residency streams for next year.

The updated immigration levels plan released this week shows 49,000 spaces for refugees seeking permanent residency in 2026, down from about 58,000 this year.

The Canadian Council for Refugees points out the federal budget also contains a one-time initiative to grant permanent residency to an additional 115,000 protected individuals who are already in Canada.

Gauri Sreenivasan, Canadian Council for Refugees co-executive director, said they see the new levels plan as a “mixed result” for refugees between this one-time program and the overall cut.

“We have almost 150,000 refugees in the backlog waiting for that signal that Canada is their permanent home, waiting for the opportunity to bring their families. And so this measure as a special recognition in a sense of the backlog waiting,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“At the same time, that was embedded in an announcement that overall continues to shrink the share of our immigration levels that are dedicated to the humanitarian component of Canada’s immigration system.”

The levels plan also suggests giving permanent residency to 5,800 next people under special humanitarian programs to welcome people who fled to Canada from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Sudan.

Data from Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s transition binder says the government planned to admit 5,300 permanent residents through Hong Kong, Ukraine and Sudan programs in 2025.

Roy Lee of the Hong Kong Pathways Alliance said his group wants to see a one-time program to accelerate permanent residency for special humanitarian programs, citing a backlog of more than 50,000 applications.

“That little increase in the quota is obviously not enough to clear the backlogs in our pathways,” Lee said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“For the Hong Kong pathway, every month we have more than 1,000 applicants … I think it’s not enough to even reduce the backlog number in one week for the Hong Kong pathway.”

The transition binder says the wait time for permanent residency through the humanitarian and compassionate pathway is between 12 months and 50 years.

A senior official from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Wednesday demand for these programs can exceed the number of spaces in any given year and applications will continue to be processed.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press