Canada's Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab has unveiled an immigration plan under which the country will take in about 2.2 million people over the next three years, with 380,000 permanent residents and 370,000 new temporary residents admitted each year under the 2027–2029 Immigration Levels Plan tabled alongside Budget 2026.
The plan, tabled around November 5, 2026, holds permanent resident admissions at 380,000 a year for 2027, 2028 and 2029, with an operational range of roughly 352,500 to 422,000. The economic class is the largest share, at about 64 per cent, or around 244,700 people a year. New temporary residents are set at 370,000 a year — 220,000 workers and 150,000 students.
The 2.2 million figure is the sum of the plan's annual totals — 380,000 permanent residents plus 370,000 new temporary residents, multiplied by three years, or about 2.25 million — rather than a single headline number announced by the minister. The government presents the permanent resident targets as including many people already living in Canada who transition to permanent status, rather than new arrivals alone.
Diab has defended the levels as sustainable and well managed, saying the government is restoring control, prioritising Canada's capacity, housing and services, and slowing population growth so infrastructure can catch up. She has publicly said: “We brought in too many people in the past.” Budget 2026 carries the slogan “Masters of Our Destiny / Maîtres chez nous.”
On Wednesday, November 12, Diab announced in Dieppe, New Brunswick, that provinces and territories will get optional extra space under the Provincial Nominee Program to transition up to 100,000 workers and their families already living and working in Canada to permanent residence in 2027, with allocations to be used by March 31, 2027. Combined with other groups already in Canada — including remaining Hong Kong pathway applicants, Ukraine family reunification cases and humanitarian cases — the measure is framed as supporting up to about 200,000 people already in Canada moving to permanent residence. The government says these are not new arrivals and the measure creates no new programs.
The plan has drawn criticism from those who say it keeps admissions far too high after years of record inflows. Over the last four years, Canada admitted about 1.8 million permanent residents — roughly 438,000 in 2022, 472,000 in 2023, 484,000 in 2024 and 394,000 in 2025. Counting temporary workers and students as well, total arrivals reach 3 to 4 million, with the temporary resident population peaking above three million. Canada's population growth peaked near 2.5 to 3 per cent a year in 2022 and 2023, almost entirely driven by migration, among the fastest in the developed world, before slowing sharply as policy tightened.
The announcement was mocked online by critics who noted the contrast with the record inflows. In a post sharing video of Diab speaking at the Budget 2026 podium, the account Tablesalt wrote that the minister “calls it 'Canada first'” — a label that does not appear in the government's own description of the plan, which calls the levels “sustainable” and “well-managed.”
Diab, the Liberal MP for Halifax West—Peggy's Cove, has been Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship since May 2025.