Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s new immigration plan: 380,000 permanent residents (PR) a year. He also announced up to 200,000 additional PR spaces in 2027
With last year’s 148,000 announced additional spaces, Canada could grant PR to up to 662,000 people in 2027.
Does this mean we are seeing a dramatic shift in immigration policy? Yes and no.
The bosses want migrant workers.
Workers, regardless of immigration status, are who truly keep our societies running. Our work produces the goods and services that businesses make money from.
But the bosses have a dilemma.
They want to pay workers as little as possible and give us as few rights as possible. Because the less they pay us, the more profit they keep.
But there is a limit to this. They need to pay us enough to pay rent and buy things. Because if we don’t spend, they don’t make money.
Bosses in Canada, like in most countries, solve part of this with migrant workers.
Migrant families and our home countries feed and educate us. Canada gets workers without needing to invest in raising us.
But because we don’t have full immigration status, we are constantly worried about losing our jobs, housing and ability to stay in Canada. So we can be paid less, treated worse and given fewer rights.
And with Canadians having fewer children and the population getting older, businesses need more workers.
But there is an opposite problem.
Canadian businesses and governments have been profiting from migrant exploitation but are still failing to improve the lives of the majority of working people.
Rent is high, groceries are unaffordable, and things are hard and getting worse for almost everyone but the richest 1%.
People are looking for who is responsible. And to distract them from holding governments and corporations accountable, they are encouraged to blame someone else.
Migrants.
Migrant scapegoating is an old trick. And it works. In a recent poll, nearly half the people in Canada said there are too many immigrants. And this year’s federal budget released last week continues to falsely link immigration levels to bad housing and public services.
This is the Carney dilemma.
Anti-immigrant politicians and businesses, including the federal Conservatives, want fewer migrants and want to blame us for problems they created. Other bosses want more of us for profit.
Carney, an economist and former banker, is a true friend of the billionaires. He is trying to keep both groups happy.
But there is another problem. People aren’t coming.
In 2025, Canada wanted about 674,000 new migrant workers and international students to come in.
Only 324,000 came. Less than half of what they planned.
In 2026, the government lowered its target to 385,000. But by August of this year, only about 195,000 had arrived.
This is a major problem. When new people arrive, they have to start from scratch: get a phone, rent a house, buy furniture, open a bank account. This creates profit and economic churn. Fewer new arrivals hits the economy hard.
So Carney is creating more PR spaces: up to 200,000 in 2027, on top of the 148,000 he announced last year for 2026–2027.
When people get PR, they can make longer-term plans and they spend more money. Maybe buy a car. Start saving to buy a house. Do the things they have been putting off. This increases economic activity. That’s what they are after.
The additional 200,000 PR spots announced this year and the 148,000 last year are not new permanent programs open to everybody. Here is who is being prioritized, and why.
First, refugees and families. Last year, Canada promised PR to up to 115,000 people whose refugee claims had already been approved. Now the government is promising faster processing for two groups: people who applied for PR on humanitarian grounds that have been approved in principle; and spouses, partners and children of Canadians who are already in Canada waiting to be processed.
Much of this is about clearing backlogs for people who have already qualified, and who have been waiting for a very long time for PR.
Second, political priorities. The government plans to process all remaining applications under the Ukrainian and Hong Kong PR programs that are now closed.
These people deserve PR as much as anyone else. People fleeing war and danger in Sudan and Gaza also deserve safety. The government’s choices are about Canada’s close coordination with US-led foreign policy, which treats Russia and China as key rivals, and not true humanitarianism.
Third, migrant workers who have been fighting for PR. The government says it will accelerate PR for some people who applied for PR under the now-closed caregiver and Agri-Food programs.
For workers who have been organizing and demanding status for years, this could be a major win.
Fourth, business immigration. The government is also speeding up applications under the Start-Up Visa and Self-Employed Persons programs, prioritizing people with money who it believes will grow the economy.
Permanent residence for hundreds of thousands of additional people could be a massive step forward. But major questions remain.
The government calls the additional spaces a ceiling, not a guarantee.
And the backlogs are enormous. Government figures from February showed approximately 40,000 applications in the queue across different caregiver PR pathways and another 8,000 applications in the Agri-Food Pilot queue. Some of these applications are still at preliminary stages.
The government has not said how many spots each program will get, so we don’t know exactly how many people will actually get PR faster.
Employer control over immigration is accelerating.
Just weeks before the immigration announcement, the federal government changed the scoring system for some permanent residence pathways.
People with Canadian work experience or jobs in high-wage occupations can now get extra points.
This continues the long tradition of favouring higher-paid workers while making it harder for many lower-wage workers, disproportionately racialized people and women, to qualify for PR.
But something else is happening that we aren’t talking about enough.
Provinces across Canada are demanding more control over immigration. In Alberta, a majority of voters recently supported giving the provincial government greater control over immigration.
But what does more provincial control mean for workers?
In most provincial immigration programs, workers need a job offer or active support from an employer to qualify for PR.
This gives bosses a carrot and a stick. They can promise to help workers get PR if they accept poor conditions, or withhold support for PR if workers speak up for their rights.
For workers on employer-tied permits, the same boss controls their job and their path to PR.
In 2027, 106,500 regular PR spaces – nearly 30% of the total for the year – will go through provincial and rural immigration programs, where employers have near complete control over who is selected.
And that is before counting the rest of the 33,000 workers being fast-tracked over 2026–2027, and up to 100,000 additional worker and family PR spaces in 2027, many of which will also be influenced by employers.
Re-expansion of employer-tied permits and permit cancellations
Just one day after announcing the new immigration plan, Carney quietly made it easier for businesses to keep low-wage migrant workers for longer.
Employers can now keep workers on tied permits for up to two years instead of one. They can also hire more workers on tied permits in smaller communities.
Workers get less uncertainty about renewals. They also stay tied to the same employer for two years.
Since 2023, we have warned that Canada plans to cut non-permanent residents to under 5% of the population by the end of 2027, which is resulting in hundreds of thousands of people losing their permits. We have demanded PR for all of them.
Employers, on the other hand, have been asking for longer tied permits. Carney again picked the bosses’ side.
The 5% target hasn’t changed. No new PR programs have been announced. It is unclear how, or if, Carney can square this circle.
No welcome for refugees
Canada plans to bring in only 11,750 refugees in 2027 through government assistance programs, about half the 23,305 resettled in 2023.
Those applying for protection from inside Canada are being denied free healthcare. Since May, the federal refugee health program has been cut, and refugees now have to pay for part of their healthcare bills.
C-12, passed earlier this year, denies refugee hearings to people who claim more than one year after first entering Canada.
On November 3, Carney made it worse. The government gave itself 365 days to pre-investigate refugee claims before they go to an independent hearing. An additional year of limbo, family separation, and few rights.
Refugees’ timelines have been shortened. Starting in January, refugees will generally have only 30 days to submit evidence, instead of being able to submit it until shortly before their hearing. That means people fleeing persecution must find lawyers, collect documents from countries they have fled and prove they need protection under extremely tight deadlines.
And the government is massively expanding deportations. CBSA – Canada’s ICE – has had its budget for removals increased by 74% over the last five fiscal years, from $50 million to $87 million annually. This comes after Canada carried out a record 23,178 removals in 2025 – about 63 people every day, a 33% increase over 2024. Almost all the deportations were of refugee claimants.
We are people, not machines, not numbers.
Politicians and the media keep talking about immigration levels, targets, spaces and numbers.
We have lives. We love. We get hungry. We get sick. We have dreams.
On October 29, two more migrant farmworkers from Guatemala, Carlos Roberto Cos Sacoy and Denilson Marroquín Ajpop, aged just 25 and 27, were killed after being struck by a vehicle while walking along a rural road in Ontario.
Across Canada, migrants grow food while living far from essential services, often without safe transportation or decent housing. They are forced to be out late at night for the most basic of needs and they keep being killed.
Migrants deserve rights. We are not a tap to turn on and off for the benefit of those getting rich off our backs.
So what do we do?
The government has shown us something important: It can create additional PR spaces when it wants to, and choose who gets them.
We must continue to fight for permanent resident status for all, an end to employer-tied permits and deportations, and equal rights and access to services for everyone.
ARE YOU A MIGRANT? Some of the additional PR spots will help people who have waited for years. But there is a lot of misinformation right now.
We have created a tool to help you find out whether you might get PR faster under the new announcements: https://migrantrights.ca/levels2027
EVERYONE, INCLUDING MIGRANTS: Please share this analysis with everyone you know. We need to understand what’s happening so we can act together for the rights of all, migrants or not.