Back to top

News

IRCC announces new measures to decrease the number of temporary residents in Canada

Earlier this week, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada announced multiple significant change to temporary resident programs in Canada. These changes will impact many foreign workers, students, and their spouses, both for individuals already in Canada and for individuals seeking to come to Canada in the future.

Reductions to Number of Foreign Students

This past year, IRCC implemented a cap on the issuance of international study permits and created additional measures to reduce the weaken the attractiveness of Canada’s international study program. These measures have achieved their intended goal, as 2024 has seen a 38% decrease in international students coming into Canada from 2023.

For 2025 and 2026, IRCC will further reduce the study permit targets by 10%, with 437,000 study permits being issued per year. 12% of this cap will be reserved for Master’s and PhD students, who were previously exempt from the study permit cap.

New Limitations for the Post-Graduation Work Permit Program

Beginning November 1st, 2024, Applicants applying for Post-Graduation Work Permits following their studies will need to meet the following language proficiency requirements:

  • University Graduates: Canadian Language Benchmark 7
  • College Graduates: Canadian Language Benchmark 5

In the future, Post-Graduation Work Permits will be limited to graduates of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs. Public college graduates will only be eligible for these work permits if their field of study is linked to long-term labour market storages in Canada. Based on the information we have been provided, it appears that this change will be applied to those applying for study permits on or after November 1st.

Fewer Opportunities for Spouses of Work and Study Permit Holders

Study Permit Holders: Currently, the spouse of a foreign student is eligible for a work permit only if the foreign student is studying in an eligible program. These programs include master’s or doctoral degrees, an eligible pilot program, or a designated professional program (such as law or medicine). This change, implemented in Spring 2024, was a substantial departure from previous policy.

Moving forward, IRCC will further restrict the list of spouses. For example, only spouses of master’s students in programs greater than 16 months will be eligible for work permits.

Work Permit Holders: IRCC has announced forthcoming significant changes to work permit eligibility for spouses of work permit holders. In January 2023, IRCC made a groundbreaking move to broaden eligibility for open work permits to the spouses of nearly all workers in Canada However, recent announcements indicate a rollback of this expansion. The new criteria will likely focus on spouses of:

  • Highly Skilled Workers (such as executives, scientists, and professors)
  • Workers in Critical Sectors (such as health care and construction)
  • Workers in Areas of Labour Shortage

This rollback appears to narrow the criteria further than the pre-January 2023 policy, with an anticipated impact on over 100,000 spouses over the next 3 years.

Additional Restrictions on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

We previously wrote about the updates to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, coming into force on September 26th. This week, the Government provided additional details about these changes.

The cap on the proportion of foreign workers that can be hired under the Low-Wage stream has been reduced to 10% for most industries, across Canada, including Quebec. The maximum employment duration for these positions will remain at one year.

Only employers in healthcare, construction, and food processing may keep the 20% cap, and occupations in the Primary Agriculture Stream will not be subject to the one-year limitation.

The Refusal to Process for low-wage Labour Market Impact Assessment will remain in areas with an unemployment rate of over 6%. The unemployment rate data will be updated 4x a year, which may result in substantial variance in the Refusal to Process locations.

This program will continue to be monitored for another 90 days, and we anticipate changes to the high-wage stream, pending LMIA applications, sectoral exceptions, and Refusal to Process jurisdictions.