Canada may miss its 2025 permanent resident target. From January to August 2025, the country admitted only 276,870 new permanent residents.
To reach its planned target for the year, Canada would need to welcome more than 118,000 new immigrants in the remaining four months of 2025.
According to updated projections, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is on track to miss its 2025 target by over 43,000 admissions.
How The Projections Were Calculated?
To understand how Canada is performing in 2025, let us look at real admissions data from 2023 and 2024. In both years, the first three quarters accounted for around 78% of total yearly admissions.
Here is the data:
| 2023 | 2024 | |
| Admissions (Q1, Q2, Q3) | 371,415 | 380,215 |
| Total (real) yearly admissions | 471,820 | 483,605 |
Assuming that the first three quarters of the year also accounted for 78% of overall admissions in 2025, projections suggest that the government will admit a total of 351,938 PRs this year, against a planned target of 395,000 admissions.
This means IRCC would fall short by 43,062 permanent residents. Well, this would amount to an 11% shortfall.
Moreover, this slowdown suggests not only that the government set lower targets for 2025, but also that the pace of new PR arrivals has generally dropped compared to previous years.
Below is a comparison showing the percentage of PRs admitted by Q3 of each year relative to the planned yearly admissions target.
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| 79.87% | 78.39% | 70.09% |
Note that planned admissions are from the annual Immigration Levels Plan. They help show how far IRCC has progressed each year by Q3. Real full-year admissions for 2025 are not yet available.
The drop to 70.09% in 2025 clearly shows the slowdown. Canada is not bringing in new permanent residents at the same pace as in 2023 and 2024.
Why Permanent Resident Admissions Are Lower In 2025?
As Canada may miss its 2025 permanent resident target, let us see why the PR admissions are lower this year.
Well, the federal government has signaled that it plans to bring PR admissions down to below 1% of the national population after 2027.
As a result, several major policy changes in 2024 and 2025 have affected how many people can become permanent residents.
Lower PR Targets For 2025
Under the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan, the government set a target of 395,000 PR admissions for 2025. In comparison, the 2024 target was 485,000.
This represents a reduction of 90,000 PRs year-over-year.
This lower target is one major reason for the overall drop in admissions.
Reduction In Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) Allocations
Another significant policy change is the drop in Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) admissions.
In 2025, the federal government reduced the number of PR admissions through the PNP to 55,000, down from 110,000 in 2024, which is a 50% cut.
Even though some provinces negotiated small increases afterward, their total 2025 allocations still remained far lower than in 2024.
Because of this reduction, provinces have been holding smaller PNP draws, which leads to fewer candidates being nominated and eventually becoming PRs.
Closure And Suspension Of PNP Streams
Many provinces have adjusted their immigration programs to fit the newly reduced allocations. Some streams were paused, reconfigured, or closed entirely across 2024 and 2025, including:
- British Columbia closing its International Graduate and International Post-Graduate streams, and pausing the launch of three new student streams.
- Saskatchewan ending all three of its Entrepreneur and Farm streams.
- Ontario closing its Entrepreneur Stream and passing its Express Entry Skilled Trades Stream.
- New Brunswick closing the NB Student Connection pathway under its Express Entry Stream.
In addition, several provinces added occupation restrictions, shifted to priority-based selection, or stopped accepting new Expressions of Interest for certain categories for the rest of the year.
All these changes naturally reduce the number of future permanent residents.
Fewer Express Entry Invitations To Apply (ITAs)
Comparing ITAs issued from January through October, in total the immigration department issued 9,350 fewer invitations this year compared to 2024:
- 2024: 90,835 ITAs
- 2025: 81,485 ITAs
A major change is that no STEM category-based draws have taken place in 2025, even though 4,500 people received ITAs through STEM draws in 2024.
It’s important to note that one ITA can lead to multiple new PRs because spouses and dependents of the main applicant also receive PR status.
Fewer Temporary Residents Entering Canada
The government wants to bring the number of temporary residents (TRs) down to less than 5% of Canada’s population by the end of 2027. To reach this goal, several changes were introduced in 2024, including:
- Making it harder for spouses of temporary foreign workers and international students to get spousal open work permits.
- Putting limits on how many study permit applications can be submitted.
- Adding new language and field-of-study rules for getting a Post-Graduation Work Permit (for non-exempt programs).
- Pausing LMIA processing for low-wage jobs in areas where unemployment is 6% or higher.
Temporary residents are an important source of future PR applicants.
Because of these changes, Canada will have fewer temporary residents overall, and fewer people will be able to qualify to move from temporary status to permanent residency in the coming years.
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