Federal and provincial ministers will meet Friday in Montreal to discuss how to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller is expected to meet in person with his provincial and territorial counterparts for the first time since announcing an unprecedented plan to place limits on the number of new temporary residents.
The goal is to curb Canada’s runaway growth by reducing the number of temporary residents from 6.2 per cent of Canada’s population in 2023 to five per cent over the next three years.
The new targets will be developed over the summer, after provinces and territories have had a chance to weigh in, but labor economist Mikal Skuterud said they should not be considered in isolation.
“You can’t do that, it’s part of the whole system,” said Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo.
He was one of the first to warn the government to moderate the massive increase in people immigrating to Canada temporarily to work or study.
Miller announced plans to reduce the number of international students by putting a two-year limit on new admissions in January.
The government is also trying to speed up the time it takes to process asylum claims and, in the recent federal budget, included legislative measures designed to speed up the deportation process when those claims are denied.
The last and largest category that still needs to be addressed is that of temporary work permit holders. Miller has said it’s a workforce that the labor market has become addicted to in recent years.
In 2018, there were 337,460 temporary work visa holders. By 2022, that number has increased to 605,851.
Skuterud credits increasing due to changes to the criteria for permanent residents, which were designed to fill specific job gaps. Those changes have created an incentive for lower-skilled workers to come to Canada in hopes of obtaining permanent residency.
“That’s what’s attracting a large number of people to come and creating this problem in the (non-permanent resident) population,” he said. He suggests the problem could be reversed by creating a more predictable path to permanent residency for newcomers.
A major focus for ministers will be negotiating how to allocate fewer temporary visas, which employers have come to rely on.
No matter what, adjusting course will bring some complications.
In Manitoba, for example, announcements from Ottawa about reducing temporary immigration have been met with an overwhelming increase in applications for the provincial permanent residency candidate program.
Earlier this week, Miller agreed to Manitoba’s request to extend federal work permits for about 6,700 newcomers whose visas were set to expire at the end of the year, to give them time to apply to remain in Canada permanently.
The new target for temporary visas will also significantly slow population growth. While that could relieve some pressure on housing costs and availability, it could also result in worker shortages, Andrew Grantham, chief executive of CIBC Economics, said in a report published last month.
“Restrictions on population growth could result in companies having to offer higher wages to encourage people to stay or re-enter the workforce. We could lose some companies that simply are not profitable if they cannot use foreign workers with low wages,” Grantham said.
The labor needs of each province are expected to be a major factor in Friday’s discussions. New targets for temporary visas will be published in the autumn.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2024.