July 2025

The Canadian public is invited to share their opinions and feedback on immigration levels and related topics with IRCC through an online survey. The ‘2025 consultations on immigration levels’ is open from July 21, 2025, to August 17, 2025. I encourage you to participate in the survey.

 

Canada releases an Immigration Levels Plan annually, announcing a snapshot of Canada’s immigration targets for the next three years. When the Immigration Levels Plan for 2025 was announced in October 2024, it indicated that Canada would reduce the number of both temporary and permanent residents accepted between 2025 and 2027.

 

These numbers are decided in consideration of government priorities, economic needs across Canada, international obligations, the administrative capacity of IRCC, and Canada’s capacity to settle and integrate newcomers. IRCC conducts a series of engagement activities over several months, engaging with stakeholders and partners from across the country, the provinces and territories, and consulting with the Canadian public. Through online surveys, Canadians provided feedback to IRCC regarding immigration levels and other topics related to immigration. IRCC then publishes a final report of the consultations, such as ‘the 2024 consultations on immigration levels - final report’.

 

In 2024, IRCC introduced targets for temporary residents, diverging from the traditional focus on the number of permanent residents. Retaining the same approach, the 2025 consultations will contribute to the number of permanent residents and temporary residents that Canada will welcome between 2025 and 2027.  

 

The following three commitments will be guiding this year’s Immigration Levels Plan:

1. Lower the non-permanent resident population to less than 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2027
2. Stabilize permanent resident admissions at less than 1% of Canada’s population annually beyond 2027
3. Establish a 12% target for Francophone immigration outside of Quebec by 2029 to promote the vitality of Francophone communities

 

For temporary residents, the 2025 survey focuses on the targets currently set for ‘Workers’ and ‘Students’ categories. It asks the Canadians to comment on whether these numbers are too high, too low, or about right. On permanent residents, the 2025 survey similarly asks the Canadians to comment on whether the numbers for the ‘Economic classes’, ‘Family classes’, and ‘Refugees, protected persons, and persons in Canada on humanitarian grounds’ are too high, too low, or about right. The survey asks Canadians to prioritize the immigration class in the event of an increase and in the event of a reduction.

 

It also highlights Francophone immigration outside of Quebec, with a current target of 12% to bolster Francophone immigration by 2029. We saw this commitment earlier this year with the launch of the two pilots, the Rural Community Immigration Pilot and the Francophone Community Immigration Pilot (read more in our February 2025 newsletter).

 

The 2024 Immigration Levels Plan for 2025-2027 sparked much controversy and debate amongst the public. In particular, the introduction of targets for temporary residents, when the plan had traditionally focused only on permanent residents. We will need to reflect on whether the reductions have successfully contributed to “a sustainable immigration system that supports diversity and helps build vibrant, dynamic and inclusive communities, while driving economic growth and prosperity, as well as ensuring the safety and security of Canadians.”

July 2025

The end of this month will bring a new Parents and Grandparents draw from the same pool of interest from 2020. 10,000 families who completed the interest to sponsor in 2020 but have not yet been invited to apply will receive emails from IRCC inviting them to complete their applications.  

The draw will begin on July 28th, 2025. Those who have a chance at being drawn should check their spam or junk folder, and if they are using Gmail, their socials folder to ensure that the invitation email is not missed. 

Those who didn’t complete the interest to sponsor form, or who couldn’t, because they weren’t permanent residents at the time, are still out of luck. 

June 2025

IRCC has more than 13,905 employees, with 42 offices across the country and 60 overseas offices. It is no surprise that transparency is difficult to achieve, both to the public and internally within IRCC. This month, however, we received the very first report from IRCC on its internal misconduct and wrongdoing. The report covers investigations completed in the fiscal year 2023-2024 into allegations of misconduct and wrongdoing by IRCC employees.

Based on the report, a total of 62 cases were found to have merit out of the 76 investigations completed. 37 out of the 62 cases were regarding ‘Administrative Misconduct’, which includes time theft, tardiness, absenteeism, unauthorized leave, insubordination, failure to carry out duties, and the misuse of government assets.

The other categories of misconduct cases, though fewer in number, are made up for by the seriousness of their nature. For example, one investigation reported that an IRCC case processing agent tried to bribe another employee to accept money in exchange for approving a study permit. Upon being informed that such a request violated IRCC’s Code of Conduct, the agent quickly fabricated a story to claim that another individual, to whom the agent owed money, had taken control of their laptop and requested the information. This agent’s reliability status (their security clearance) was revoked.

There were nine cases of harassment reported in the 2023-24 fiscal year. Three of these cases involve racist comments being made towards colleagues or during conversations. While racism is a grave matter in any context, in the context of a government department in charge of immigration, it is particularly disheartening and disconcerting.

One of the harassment cases was filed by a supervisor who filed a complaint several years after an incident where an employee made a death threat and coerced them into adjusting their performance appraisal, and accused them of being a liar. The supervisor, at the time of the incident, did not feel that the work environment was supportive enough to report the incident. In response to the harassment case, the entire branch, including employees and supervisory positions, received respective training.

In another case, an IRCC employee was found to have formed a social relationship with an individual they met at a residential facility for refugee claimants. It was found that this employee provided preferential treatment by coaching the claimant on how to engage with the Department and later co-signed the claimant’s car loan. IRCC suspended the employee without pay for creating a conflict of interest.

The report noted that 12 IRCC employees were found to have abused their system access privileges to check or request the status of files for themselves, family members, or friends. Some of these employees also attempted to expedite the processing of the file or requested that another employee make corrections to it. Some of these cases also involved serious privacy breaches.

IRCC states that the objective of this report is to “increase confidence in [their] systems of accountability, empower [their] employees to speak up, and to showcase the actions [IRCC] has taken to address misconduct and wrongdoing.”

The report undoubtedly exposes threats to the integrity and fairness of Canada’s immigration system. Still, it also encourages employees to feel empowered to report incidents of misconduct and wrongdoing without fear of reprisal. IRCC needs to strive for further transparency, not only internally but also to the public. Internally, it may be a misconduct, but behind each immigration application are hours of work, significant monetary costs, and families waiting anxiously for a response from IRCC.

 

May 2025

Written by our law student, Songyun Lu, who is spending her summer academic break learning to love immigration law as much as I do! Songyun immigrated to Canada as a tween, and shares her personal experiences in the newsletters she writes.

 

From my personal experience, I have seen disproportionately more immigrants who found jobs outside of their profession than those who found jobs in their profession after immigrating to Canada. I have many friends whose parents had to either restart their professional education in Canada or give up on their profession completely, due to the lengthy and costly process of re-education or obtaining licensing in Canada. This occupational mismatch is a commonly accepted and often anticipated reality amongst immigrants.