Canada Immigration Announces Its New Immigration Plan To Fill Labor Market Shortage

February 14, 2022 – Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada announced the Immigration Levels Plan for 2022-2024 that reveals an ambitious but at the same time responsible immigration path that will help recover and fuel post-pandemic growth in the Canadian economy. This new Immigration Levels Plan will also strengthen communities as well as industries across Canada that rely on the country’s immigration.

The pandemic accentuated the contributions of the country’s newcomers to the success of the country’s communities as well as all sectors of the economy. In the previous year, Canada was able to welcome the most number of immigrants in a single year in the country’s immigration history as the country welcomed more than 405,000 new permanent residents. With regards to jobs, there are still hundreds of thousands of vacant positions across all sectors that are waiting to be filled despite having recovered many of the job that was lost during the pandemic. Canadian immigration has already accounted for almost 100% of labor force growth, and by the end of this decade, 5 million Canadians are to retire making the worker to retiree ratio drop down to only 3:1. With that, it is safe to say that Canada has a strong economic need for increased immigration.

Recently, the Government of Canada has announced a plan to modernize Canada’s immigration system to help fuel its economic recovery as well as improve client experience to help support these increased levels. This will help address the key challenges that are faced by clients, like reducing inventories as well as creating the predictable processing times that clients expect.

This newly released plan will help Canada increase the attraction as well as retention of all newcomers in regions that has critical labor, economic as well demographic challenges. In addition to this, it will also increase Francophone immigration outside Quebec while being a support to the successful integration of newcomers who are French-speaking as well as strengthening Francophone communities across Canada. The immigration is currently working to aim the target of 4.4% OF French-speaking immigrants who are outside of Canada as part of its Francophone Immigration Strategy.

Highlights of the said plan include the following:
• By 2024, the overall submission must reach 1.4% of the Canadian population
• Long-term economic growth focus where nearly 60% of admissions in the Economic Class
• Help for the unguarded population. For example, special measures that grant permanent residence to all refugee claimants who are working in health care during the course of the pandemic
• Support global crisis by giving a safe haven to those who are facing persecution through the humanitarian immigration
• Talent retention of the individuals who are already in Canada by the means of granting them permanent status to temporary residents who are accepted through the time-limited pathways for essential workers were launched

The plan is made to also recognize the importance of family reunification as well as helps maintain the standard processing time of 12 months for spouses and children. Canada remains unyielding with regards to its humanitarian commitments, this includes the plan to resettle at least 40,000 Afghan nationals over the course of 2 years. As a result, more than 1,550 Afghan refugees call Canada their home.