Canada launches new program to grant 33,000 foreign workers permanent residence, immigration minister reveals

Lena Metlege Diab says in an interview that the program has been soft-launched as large numbers of migrants are running out of status in Canada.

March 6, 2026 By Nicholas Keung Senior Immigration Reporter, and Ghada AlsharifImmigration and Work Reporter Toronto Star

Ottawa has soft-launched a promised program to transition current work permit holders to permanent residence, as soaring numbers of migrants are running out of status in Canada, says Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab.

The highly anticipated program is set to offer permanent status to 33,000 skilled temporary foreign workers in in-demand sectors over two years. It was announced in November, but officials have been mum about it since.

“We have launched it already,” Diab said during an interview with the Star this week, where she also touched on questions about her competence. “I am not in a position to tell you specifically how many so far, but we will in the month of April be able to provide more clarity and more detail on them.”

Government data showed that 2,125,035 temporary residents had their permits expire in 2025 and another 1,938,805 are expected to run out of status in 2026. The questions of where they have gone and will end up have prompted concerns over a potential surge of undocumented population.

Prime Minister Mark Carney made a campaign promise last year to reduce the non-permanent resident population to under five per cent of Canada’s overall population by 2027, down from the 6.8 per cent as of December.

Transitioning temporary migrants to become permanent is one way to shrink the temporary resident population. Last year, said Diab, more than half of the 395,000 people who were brought into permanent residency were in Canada on temporary permits.

“If you’re in Canada on temporary status, be it visitor, be it student, be it worker, for whatever reason you wish to stay longer than the time limit, we are saying please apply for an extension,” said Diab, who spoke virtually to the Star in a rare media interview amid a string of meetings in Saskatchewan.

“If you do not apply for an extension, we expect you to honour that commitment and leave. What we are also saying is even if you did apply for extension, it may be granted or it may be rejected for various reasons. If it is then rejected, we expect you to also leave.”

The federal government is currently trying to ram the controversial Bill C-12 through Parliament, which would give immigration officials the power to cancel, pause and suspend documents and applications if it’s in the “public interest” to do so. Diab maintained that officials won’t use this authority as a tool to clear staggering immigration backlogs.

“It’s exceptional powers,” she said. “There are many eyes that will have to go on a decision like this.”

The immigration minister’s priorities

Diab said she is focused on the immigration priorities set in Carney’s mandate letter: reducing temporary resident numbers; stabilizing permanent resident admission levels at under one per cent of Canada’s total population beyond 2027; ensuring 12 per cent of new permanent residents will be francophones settling outside Quebec by 2029; and implementing an international talent attraction strategy.

A former immigration minister in Nova Scotia, Diab said she is working closely with her provincial counterparts as well as local communities and employers to address their needs. But their interests don’t always align and it requires constant balancing act.

“You’ve got politicians that are saying, ‘Shut down the temporary foreign workers (program),’ but I hear from hundreds and hundreds of industry, businesses, people that are working, chambers of commerce … they need workers because there aren’t enough Canadians to fill the jobs in certain sectors,” she explained. “It is a challenge.”

When asked how she plans to address critical labour shortages in sectors where employers have grown increasingly reliant on newcomers to fill gaps — including agriculture, construction and hospitality — Diab said immigration pilot programs are being tested in some areas. However, she added that provinces and territories ultimately “have to step up” in communicating these labour needs to their respective communities.

“It’s not just governments and politicians.”

Diab was also asked whether proposed reforms to the temporary foreign worker program — which ties migrant workers’ status in Canada to a single employer — would be revisited and if there are future plans to grant workers permanent status upon arrival.

“Provinces and territories are responsible for establishing health, labour and workplace safety standards for all workers,” her department said in a email after the interview. It added that migrant workers can contact a confidential tip line to report abuse without fear of reprisal or apply for a vulnerable worker open work permit if they wish to change employers.

Born in Canada to Lebanese immigrants, Diab said international students are very close to her heart. As a provincial minister, she said she would host a welcoming ceremony to greet new students each fall. During the pandemic, she spent some Christmases at some universities to have a meal with foreign students “to show them love” because they couldn’t travel home.

Still, the Carney government has vowed to cut the number of international students by half. This followed significant reductions by the Liberals under Justin Trudeau in new international students entering Canada amid public outcry about high immigration, which has been blamed for the lack of affordable housing and straining public resources such as health care.

Because of nosediving international enrolment, many colleges and universities have cancelled programs and laid off staff.

When asked how she’s going to rebuild the Canadian brand to prospective students, Diab said: “The more that we can look after our institutions and our integrity and strengthen our system and make sure that the students that are coming are really getting a valuable education, I think that is really the most important.”

Diab had been criticized in a recent media report for being “invisible” despite overseeing one of the most scrutinized cabinet portfolios, and her competence in the role was questioned by opposition MPs and even some of her Liberal colleagues. She admitted that she doesn’t have much presence on social media, and as a lawyer by profession, she values privacy and confidentiality.

So why did she accept this high-profile job as a federal immigration minister, knowing that she would be in the hot seat all the time?

“I ask myself that question every day when I wake up and before I sleep,” Diab said. “But I have faith and that grounds me. I’m also a mother. I’m a grandmother. I love my country. I love Canada. For me, it’s part of giving back.

“I like serving people.”

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Opinion | A wake-up call for Canada: There will be no nation-building without immigrants

March 9, 2026 By Yvonne Su Contributor Toronto Star

Yvonne Su is an associate professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University.

A few years ago, a visiting scholar from Japan, Prof. Kohki Abe, asked me a simple question: is Canada nation-building or nation-shrinking?

At the time, I answered instinctively — nation-building. Canada has long relied on immigration to grow our population and economy, and Justin Trudeau had just allowed record numbers of non-permanent migrants, mostly international students, to fill post-pandemic labour shortages and prop up our underfunded universities. But Kohki wasn’t convinced.

Sure enough, a few years later, the policy pendulum began swinging sharply in the other direction, with the government introducing increasingly restrictive measures, a shift that has only deepened under Mark Carney.

Kohki had witnessed first-hand the impacts of demographic decline in his homeland of Japan. For decades, Japan tried to boost births through family policies while largely resisting large-scale immigration, a choice that left the country with few tools once its population began shrinking. Could Canada be heading down the same path?

Canada is already grappling with many of the pressures associated with falling birth rates: rising housing costs, delayed family formation, economic instability and the growing difficulty of balancing careers with child rearing. But could those pressures really push the country into demographic decline?

At a moment when wealthy countries are scrambling to sustain population growth, Ottawa’s recent turn away from migration has produced a stark result: for the first time in a century, Canada is no longer growing. Statistics Canada data from late 2025 show the country recorded its largest population decline on record, driven largely by a sharp drop in non-permanent residents. For a country built on immigration, this is not a minor adjustment. It is a consequential structural shift.

The decline is not subtle. Over a single quarter, Canada lost roughly 76,000 residents as international students, temporary workers, and other visa holders exited the country. The speed and scale of the outflow matters because Canada’s fertility rate now sits at a record low of 1.25 children per woman, far below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to maintain population stability.

Canada now joins the ranks of “ultralow fertility” countries such as South Korea (0.75), Singapore (0.97), Japan (1.15), Italy (1.18), and Finland (1.25). These countries are experiencing a harsh demographic reality: without sustained migration, there is no population backstop.

If projections hold, 2026 will mark Canada’s second consecutive year of zero population growth, leaving immigration as the country’s only real engine of expansion. University of British Columbia geographer Dan Hiebert predicts that by 2029 or 2030, 100 per cent of Canada’s population growth will come from newcomers — a projection the federal government itself expects to materialize by 2032.

I previously wrote that Canada has always been Canada First and Immigrants Second. Canada has strong rules to prioritize hiring Canadian citizens for most jobs, and immigrants can’t vote and simply do not have the same rights as citizens. But the policy making that has failed to increase our fertility rate and its causes — namely rising costs, economic uncertainty and the inaccessibility of child care — is forcing us toward something new: Immigrants Only.

As in citizens alone cannot propel the country forward during these times and it is only immigrants who can drive the goals of population and economic growth under these policies. This statement may make some Canadians uncomfortable. But in the spirit of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call at Davos for “principled” and “pragmatic” leadership that sees the world as it is — not what we wish it to be — it is time to say the quiet part out loud.

Canada needs immigrants to grow.

Let’s stop pretending that Canada can expand its population, economy and infrastructure without immigrants. Let’s ask who is going to supply the human and social infrastructure that these pipelines, nuclear plants and mines depend on?

And let’s be honest about the political contradictions. Alberta is currently pushing for a referendum to reduce immigration levels, despite having previously asked Ottawa to double its provincial nomination allocations.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric may help political campaigns, but it ultimately harms both immigrants and citizens in a country that cannot grow its population or economy without them. According to Statistics Canada, immigrants remain deeply embedded across Canada’s labour market: they make up more than a third of workers in accommodation and food services, transportation and warehousing, and professional and technical sectors, and over one-fifth of the construction workforce. As such, a very large share of economic outputs is produced by immigrants.

And these contradictions are in a way being seen and discussed by the government. In discussing the temporary foreign worker program, the Immigration Minister recently said, “You’ve got politicians that are saying, ‘Shut down the temporary foreign workers (program),’ but I hear from hundreds of industry, businesses, people that are working, chambers of commerce … they need workers because there aren’t enough Canadians to fill the jobs in certain sectors.”

Paraphrasing our prime minister at Davos, I’d like to ask Canadian politicians and Canadians alike to take their anti-immigrant signs down. We are living within a lie, and we should stop performing as if it were true.

Canada’s new nation-building agenda has focused heavily on physical infrastructure. But nation-building also requires human infrastructure. Immigration is not simply a labour market tool. It is one of the country’s most important long-term development strategies.

The pragmatic argument is straightforward: immigrants stabilize demographics, fill labour shortages and sustain economic growth. But the case is also principled. People have the right to migrate and seek refuge, and Canada has built a global reputation on welcoming newcomers. Building on these strengths and continuing to weave multiculturalism into our social fabric brings us closer together, not farther apart.

If we forget our history and our strengths, we risk drifting toward the future my colleague warned about — a Canada that is no longer nation-building, but nation-shrinking.

We had CANZUK in my parents’ time. Why not today – and more?

European Union-like labour mobility was a key part of Canadian life in the past. It can be so again

Christopher Worswick The Globe and Mail 9 March 2026

Christopher Worswick is a professor of economics at Carleton University and an external fellow of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, University College London.

In 1957, my parents left the north of England to come to Canada. They did not expect this country to be their long-term home, but they had great careers and close to 70 happy years together in Canada.

When I first looked for an academic job back in 1995, I landed a great faculty position at the University of Melbourne. After five amazing years living in Australia, my own family returned to Canada having made lifelong friends and with a deep understanding of another country.

My travels were different from my parents’, though. As recently as the 1950s, Canadian citizens were considered British Subjects, and there were certain labour mobility privileges that were reciprocal within Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

My option to work in Australia was owing to the generosity of Australia’s immigration program at the time, rather than any such arrangement.

What if Canada could take inspiration from our past and introduce reciprocal migration agreements now, and not just with Australia, Britain and New Zealand – the old CANZUK idea – but also with the likes of Japan or Singapore?

This may sound like a radical move, but there is support for moving in that direction. A 2018 poll showed 76 per cent of Canadians are in favour of CANZUK. Federal Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, in a visit last week to Britain, called for such an arrangement. Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited Australia last week, has built his brand on closer ties to allies, and the Liberal Party endorsed CANZUK at its 2023 convention.

Labour mobility is a central feature of the European Union’s common market. It makes all involved countries better off because it allows workers to move to the country where their skills are most highly valued. Using a standard economic model, the U.S. economist George Kennan found that, hypothetically, allowing free labour mobility across the world could generate 50- to 100-per-cent increases in world GDP. But reciprocal migration agreements need not cover the entire world to have some of these benefits. In 2017 alone, free movement of workers in the EU raised collective GDP by an estimated €106-billion ($160-billion).

Greater labour market integration across countries will also improve production efficiency through the sharing of ideas as workers go to foreign companies and share their experiences with their networks at home. Part of these potential benefits can be seen through our existing immigration program. One study finds that immigrant employment at Canadian companies expands exports between those companies and the immigrants’ home countries.

A common labour market also helps smooth country-specific shocks. If there is a sectoral shock in one country, the capacity of some displaced workers to migrate to the other country will offset at least part of the negative consequences. Researchers find that labour mobility across countries in the euro area, primarily by immigrants, reduces the overall variation in employment rates over the business cycle. This type of mobility also raises the welfare of workers in the countries covered by the agreement in advance of a shock because it provides partial insurance against these economic downturns.

All this, of course, raises the issue of whether one country may be worse off under such labour arrangements. The migration agreement could lead to a large influx of low-wage workers from a low-wage country to a high-wage country. But for countries with comparable economies, what results is not so much any net changes in work forces but a more efficient distribution of labour, benefiting both.

Canada has primarily focused on economic immigration designed to admit large numbers of immigrants in order to support the growth of average living standards. However, in recent years, Canada’s immigration focus has shifted to population goals rather than raising GDP per capita.

Added to this policy shift, the Trudeau government’s massive expansion of the number of temporary residents in Canada greatly expanded the number of workers in their 20s – primarily coming from lower-wage countries – competing with younger Canadians.

These recent immigration surges, coupled with the weak Canadian economy, have left younger Canadians frustrated. It is time to chart a new course.

We can build on what we already have. Canada has been slowly and cautiously adding limited migration agreements as clauses of new free-trade agreements. Starting with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement implemented in 1989, workers in certain higher-wage occupations can automatically receive visas to work temporarily in the other country if they have a job offer from a company in that country. These visas have led to migration of some workers across the Canada-U.S. border, but they do not lead to permanent residency status.

Even with all of President Donald Trump’s concern about immigration, these visas survived the NAFTA renegotiation that led to the USMCA agreement. As I have argued in the past, we should deepen this labour-market integration with the U.S. by expanding the number of higher-wage occupations eligible for the USMCA visas.

Similarly, labour mobility clauses have been included in other free-trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) free-trade agreement, the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA), and the Canada-UK Continuation Trade Agreement. These clauses are less ironclad than the USMCA equivalent and leave the receiving country considerable discretion on who will be granted a work visa.

These are all good initiatives and have slowly moved us in the direction of a common international labour market among higher-wage economies. Now, we must further our labour integration through deeper reciprocal migration agreements with Australia, New Zealand, European countries, as well as other higher-wage countries, such as Singapore and Japan.

This is about the bigger picture, too. As Mr. Carney argued in Davos on Jan. 20, countries like Canada need to build “the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.” Reciprocal migration agreements with other developed, market-oriented countries can be an important part of that process.

These agreements can also enhance permanent immigration programs and open pathways for older Canadians to live for extended periods in other countries. As the allure of retiring to the U.S. sunbelt wears away for many Canadians, imagine how popular a right to live in Australia, New Zealand, Europe or Asia could be if reciprocal migration agreements can be made.

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