Canada's 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan: temporary residents cut 43%
Ottawa is pulling the temporary side of the immigration system back hard. Under the federal government's 2026-2028 plan, the target for new temporary resident arrivals, meaning workers and students combined, drops from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026. That is a 43% cut in a single year, and it sets the tone for everything else in the plan.
The numbers come straight from the federal levels plan published on canada.ca, in the supplementary information for 2026-2028. After the 2026 reset, the target holds roughly steady: 370,000 new temporary arrivals in both 2027 and 2028. So this is not a one-year dip followed by a rebound. It reads more like a new baseline that the government intends to keep.
What the temporary cut actually looks like
Break the 2026 figure apart and you get two streams. International students are capped at 155,000 new arrivals, easing slightly to 150,000 in 2027 and again in 2028. Temporary workers get 230,000 in 2026, then 220,000 in each of the following two years.
The sharpest squeeze lands on the Temporary Foreign Worker stream. Within the worker category, the TFW Program takes the steepest proportional decline, falling about 17% between 2026 and 2027. Employers who have leaned on the program to fill lower-wage and seasonal roles should plan for fewer approvals and tighter scrutiny. If you are weighing options here, our explainer on the work permit routes lays out which streams sit inside the cap and which do not.
Students are not spared either. A cap that sits at 155,000 new arrivals is a long way down from the volumes Canadian colleges and universities saw at the peak. Anyone mapping out a study permit application for 2026 or later is competing for a smaller pool of spots, and provincial attestation letters remain part of the gatekeeping.
The 5% target driving the policy
There is a single number behind all of this. The government wants Canada's temporary population, as a share of the total population, to fall below 5% by the end of 2027. That figure had climbed well above the historical norm during the post-pandemic years, and the levels plan is the lever Ottawa is using to bring it back down.
Getting under 5% is not just about slowing new arrivals. It also depends on people leaving when their permits expire or transitioning into permanent status. That is part of why the plan pairs deep temporary cuts with a steadier permanent stream. The math only works if the inflow shrinks while the existing temporary cohort gradually winds down.
For people already in Canada on a temporary status, the practical message is to act early. Permit extensions, bridging work permits, and permanent residence applications all get more competitive when the overall system is contracting. Waiting until the last month before a permit expires is riskier in this environment than it was two years ago.
Permanent residents hold steady at 380,000
While the temporary side contracts, permanent residence is being kept flat. Admissions are set at 380,000 per year across 2026, 2027, and 2028. No annual climb, no fresh cut, just a held line for three straight years.
The composition tilts firmly toward economic immigration. The economic class becomes the largest share of admissions and reaches 64% in both 2027 and 2028. In plain terms, the government is prioritizing applicants selected for their ability to work and contribute economically over other admission categories. That is good news for skilled-worker candidates watching draw patterns. For anyone in the federal pool, our running coverage of Express Entry tracks how category-based and general draws are likely to move as these targets take effect.
Holding permanent admissions flat while cutting temporary arrivals is a deliberate contrast. It signals that Ottawa is not retreating from immigration as a whole. It is rebalancing toward permanence and away from the large, fast-growing temporary cohorts that defined the last few years.
A one-time pathway for 115,000 Protected Persons
The plan also carves out a specific, time-limited measure. A one-time, two-year initiative will streamline permanent residence for roughly 115,000 Protected Persons who are already on a PR pathway.
These are people who have already been recognized as needing Canada's protection and who are sitting somewhere in the permanent residence queue. The initiative is designed to move them through more efficiently rather than create a new category from scratch. Because it is explicitly two years and one-time, it is not a permanent fixture of the system, and it sits alongside the regular admission targets rather than replacing them.
For the individuals affected, a faster, clearer route to status matters enormously. For the broader picture, processing this group helps the government convert long-standing temporary or in-process cases into settled permanent residents, which feeds back into that under-5% goal.
What it means going forward
Put the pieces together and the direction is clear. Fewer temporary workers and students, a hard pull on the TFW Program, a flat permanent intake weighted toward economic selection, and a one-time push to finalize a large group of Protected Persons.
For prospective applicants, the competitive landscape shifts. Temporary routes into Canada are narrower, so candidates who can qualify for permanent economic programs are in a stronger relative position than those relying on a study or low-wage work entry point. Employers dependent on temporary labour will feel the pinch first. We will keep tracking how each draw and policy update lands as the plan rolls out across our news coverage, because targets on paper and approvals in practice do not always move at the same speed.
Anyone with a stake in these numbers, applicants, employers, and the schools and sectors that depend on them, should read the full figures directly and plan around the 2026 reset rather than the levels of years past.
IRCC.com is an independent news site and is not affiliated with the Government of Canada. Verify the figures on canada.ca.
A small portion of this article — research support, fact-cross-checking, and copy-editing — was assisted by AI tooling. Editorial decisions, source verification, and final sign-off remain with our team. We cite primary sources from canada.ca for every factual claim.
