Budget 2026 Keeps Immigration Targets Steady but Adds 200,000 One-Time Permanent Residents

Canada will grant permanent or temporary residency to a combined total of more than a million people next year under the immigration levels plan released with the 2026 federal budget, and the numbers have quickly become a fresh fight between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who took his criticism to Brampton on Friday.

The headline targets did not move much. The 2027-2029 plan sets 380,000 permanent resident admissions and 370,000 new temporary resident arrivals for each of the next three years, which Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says aligns with what was promised in the previous plan. Last year's plan had already set permanent resident admissions at 380,000 a year for 2026 through 2028.

A one-time jump to almost 660,000

What changes the math is a separate measure. The government says it will grant permanent residency to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada, a one-time step the Globe and Mail reports is meant to reduce the backlog of applications in the system. Combined with the regular target and another one-time stream, the number of new permanent residents next year reaches almost 660,000; CBC News puts the figure Poilievre criticized at 657,250.

About half of the 200,000 will come through the Express Entry and Provincial Nominee Program streams for workers and their family members, and federal officials said provinces will be able to select workers from that group to meet regional needs. The other half will get permanent residency on humanitarian and family reunification grounds, including almost 32,000 people from Hong Kong and about 19,000 from Ukraine whose applications are already in the system.

The budget also commits $302 million over four years starting in 2027-28 to handle the transition from temporary to permanent status, and Ottawa will finish a two-year program from last year's budget that adds almost 80,000 more permanent residents in 2027.

Students and workers held steady

On the temporary side, the plan splits new arrivals into 220,000 new workers and up to 150,000 new international students in each of 2027, 2028 and 2029. The department says economic-class admissions will stay at more than 64 per cent of permanent resident admissions.

The budget also promises to reform the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, setting aside $151.5 million to implement the changes, though The Canadian Press reports details are scarce. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said before the budget that pressure from temporary workers varies significantly by region and sector. The government's stated goal is to bring the temporary resident population down to five per cent of the total population by the end of 2027, from a peak of 7.4 per cent in October 2024.

“Numbers that we can absorb”

Speaking in Brampton, Poilievre said, “We love immigration for people in numbers that we can absorb, where there are jobs, health care and housing but not when the numbers exceed our capacity to absorb people.” He added: “Our youth are desperate. They can’t find homes. They can’t find jobs and now Mark Carney wants to bring in more temporary foreign workers to make it even harder.”

Carney countered that the plan is “in line with sustainable immigration” and that his government has “taken back control of immigration.” He pointed to budget figures showing that since 2024, international students are down 71 per cent, temporary foreign workers down 57 per cent and asylum seekers down 68 per cent.

Of the 200,000 people getting permanent status, Carney said they are workers “who have been workers in the same firms, in the same communities, for years” and who renew temporary permits every year. “These are people who are not permanent in terms of the classification, but are effectively permanent residents, and we’re recognizing that,” he said.

What it means for population growth

The regular target of 380,000 equals about 0.9 per cent of Statistics Canada's most recent population estimate, CBC News calculated, rising to about 1.5 per cent with next year's one-time boost. That regular level is only slightly higher than the number of births in Canada, which was about 372,000 in 2025.

The government says it will work closely with the provinces and territories on the 200,000 conversions, including identifying 100,000 temporary workers eligible for Express Entry or a provincial nominee program.