Syed Hussan, spokesperson for Migrant Rights Network, states:
“Budget 2025 is a shocking attack on refugees and migrants. The government wants to charge refugees for basic healthcare, strip over 10,000 humanitarian spots from people fleeing persecution, and force hundreds of thousands of students out — while keeping migrant workers trapped in what the UN calls modern slavery. These are the people who feed our communities, care for our sick, and build our homes. Slashing immigration and gutting protections won’t increase affordability, it will hurt us all. We demand permanent status for all, now.
While the government claims PR numbers are ‘stable’ at 380,000, they quietly stripped over 6,000 humanitarian places in 2026 and more than 4,300 in 2027 — protecting the headline number by gutting the most vulnerable category inside it.
Budget 2025 explicitly signals devastating cuts to refugee healthcare — adding co-pays for essential medications, dental care, and supplemental health services — buried inside a $600-million IRCC austerity package. Healthcare support for asylum seekers drops from $598 million to $411 million next year, then to zero. Temporary lodging support? Eliminated entirely after 2026.
This is part of a wider strategy of scapegoating migrants for crises governments created — blaming newcomers for unaffordable housing, strained healthcare, and low wages instead of addressing corporate greed and decades of underfunding.
The federal government is slashing study permits in half — cutting from over 305,000 to just 155,000 — and this isn’t just about fewer students arriving. It means hundreds of thousands of current students in Canada will not be able to renew their permits and will be pushed into precarity or forced to leave. Between September 2024 and September 2025, rent prices went up 4.5% even though international student numbers went down. This trend will continue even after the cuts announced today.
Work permit numbers, however, remain the same — showing that corporations will continue to get a steady supply of exploitable workers with fewer paths to justice and dignity through permanent residency. The one-time offer of 33,000 work permits to PR is absent any details so requires further consideration, but the numbers are still a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers who form the backbone of vital sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and food processing — workers who are deliberately kept without equal rights or access to basic services like EI.
Meanwhile, they’re pouring over $2 billion into Canada Border Services Agency, hiring a thousand more border guards while cutting 3,300 jobs at Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada — choosing enforcement over support, punishment over pathways.
Because PR remains low compared to temporary numbers, this crisis was engineered by design: people will remain stuck as temporary, as refugees, as undocumented. We reject this strategy and demand permanent status for all, now.”
For more information, contact:
Syed Hussan
416-453-3632
hussan@migrantworkersalliance.org
Spokesperson, Migrant Rights Network