For nearly a decade, Canada's immigration story was one of growth. Year after year, IRCC raised its permanent residence targets, pushing toward what former Minister Sean Fraser once called "the most ambitious immigration plan in Canadian history." Then, almost overnight, the script flipped. The Levels Plan tabled in late 2024 broke with a generation of expansion, and the 2026 plan locked the new trajectory in place: fewer permanent residents, fewer temporary residents, and a federal government openly framing immigration as a pressure valve on housing and services rather than an engine of growth.
If you are planning an Express Entry profile, waiting on a provincial nomination, or weighing whether a Canadian study permit still makes sense, you need to understand what changed, why it changed, and where it leaves you. This guide walks through the 2026-2028 Levels Plan in plain English from the perspective of an RCIC who files these applications every week.
What the Levels Plan actually is
The Immigration Levels Plan is the federal government's annual statement of how many permanent residents Canada intends to admit, broken down by category. Under section 94 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), the Minister of Immigration must table the plan in Parliament each year, traditionally by November 1. It covers a rolling three-year window so that provinces, settlement agencies, and applicants can plan ahead.
The plan does three things that matter:
- It sets a numerical target for total PR admissions, with a low and high range.
- It allocates those admissions across economic, family, refugee, and humanitarian streams.
- Since the 2025-2027 plan, it also sets targets for temporary residents (students and workers) as a share of the population.
The plan is not law. IRCC can miss its targets in either direction, and frequently has. But it drives operational decisions: how many Express Entry invitations go out, how big each province's PNP allocation is, how many study permits are processed, and where backlogs get prioritized.
The shift: from 500,000 to 365,000
For most of the 2020s the headline number kept climbing. The 2023-2025 plan set a target of 500,000 PR admissions for both 2025 and 2026. Then, in October 2024, then-Minister Marc Miller announced a sharp reversal. The 2025-2027 plan cut the 2025 target to 395,000 and pencilled in further cuts. The 2026-2028 plan, tabled in November 2025, confirmed the trajectory.
Table 1: PR targets by year
| Year | Previous target (2023-2025 plan) | Current target (2026-2028 plan) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 485,000 | 483,000 (actual) | flat |
| 2025 | 500,000 | 395,000 | -21% |
| 2026 | 500,000 | 380,000 | -24% |
| 2027 | not set | 365,000 | new |
| 2028 | not set | 365,000 | new |
The change is roughly 120,000 fewer permanent residents per year than the original plan envisioned. To put that in scale, that gap is larger than the entire annual immigration intake of Australia.
How the 2026 target splits by category
The reduction is not spread evenly. Economic class still does most of the heavy lifting, but PNP took a disproportionate hit, while the Federal High Skilled streams (Express Entry FSW, CEC, FST) were partially shielded. Family Class is roughly flat. Refugee admissions are down sharply from the post-Afghanistan and post-Ukraine surge years.
Table 2: 2026 PR targets by category
| Category | 2026 target | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Economic (FSW + CEC + FST via Express Entry) | 115,000 | 30% |
| Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) | 55,000 | 14% |
| Federal Business (Start-up Visa, Self-employed) | 2,000 | 1% |
| Atlantic Immigration Program | 5,000 | 1% |
| Caregivers | 12,000 | 3% |
| Agri-Food and other economic pilots | 1,000 | <1% |
| Quebec economic streams | TBD by Quebec | ~13% |
| Economic subtotal | ~232,000 | 61% |
| Spouses, partners, children | 70,000 | 18% |
| Parents and grandparents (PGP) | 14,000 | 4% |
| Family subtotal | 84,000 | 22% |
| Resettled refugees and protected persons in Canada | 51,000 | 13% |
| Humanitarian, compassionate, and other | 13,000 | 4% |
| Total PR admissions | 380,000 | 100% |
Numbers rounded. Quebec sets its own economic targets and IRCC reports them separately.
A few things stand out. Economic immigration is still 61% of the pie, which is unusually high by international standards. PNP at 55,000 is a major retreat from the 120,000 it was supposed to hit in 2025 under the old plan. Family Class is the most insulated stream, in part because spousal processing is a Charter-adjacent priority.
PNP: the cut that started a fight
The single most controversial line in the 2025-2027 plan was the decision to slash provincial allocations roughly in half. Provinces had been quietly told to expect 120,000 nominations in 2025. They got 55,000. Premiers from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and the Atlantic provinces all issued statements of protest, with several arguing the cut undermined labour market planning in healthcare and construction.
The 2026-2028 plan held PNP at 55,000 per year. Provinces have responded by:
- Tightening occupation lists to prioritize healthcare, skilled trades, and tech.
- Raising minimum scores in points-based streams like Ontario's OINP Expression of Interest pools.
- Pausing or eliminating "open" streams that did not require an employer job offer.
- Pushing harder on enhanced PNP nominations (which add 600 CRS points and effectively guarantee an ITA) rather than base PNP.
If you have been waiting on a PNP draw from your province, the wait is real and it is structural. Provinces cannot issue more nominations than Ottawa has allocated them, full stop.
What it means for Express Entry
The Express Entry pool still receives the largest single share of PR slots, but the way IRCC distributes them has changed. Since 2023, IRCC has run category-based draws targeting French speakers, healthcare, STEM, trades, transport, agriculture, and education. Under the 2026 plan, the categorical share is set to keep climbing, with French-language proficiency and healthcare receiving the largest carve-outs.
For applicants, this means:
- General CEC and FSW draws are smaller and less frequent. CRS cutoffs in general draws have stayed in the high 400s to low 500s through 2025.
- Category-based draws can clear at much lower CRS scores (sometimes mid-400s for French, mid-400s for healthcare) but require you to fit the category.
- PNP-enhanced draws continue but at lower volume, because there are fewer nominations to draw against.
See our Express Entry draws and CRS cutoff history for the running numbers.
Temporary residents: the parallel cut
The 2025-2027 plan was the first to include numerical targets for temporary residents, aiming to bring the temporary population from roughly 7.3% of Canada's population down to 5% by the end of 2027. The 2026-2028 plan keeps that target.
Table 3: Temporary resident targets
| Year | Net new temporary residents (target) | Population share goal |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -445,000 (net reduction) | trending down |
| 2026 | -445,000 | ~5.5% |
| 2027 | -17,000 | 5.0% |
| 2028 | flat | 5.0% |
The "negative" numbers mean Canada is planning for more temporary residents to leave or transition to PR than to arrive. The mechanisms doing the work:
- Study permit cap. First imposed in January 2024 at roughly 360,000 approved permits, then reduced again for 2025 to approximately 437,000 applications (resulting in around 300,000 approvals). Each province gets a share and must issue a Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) for most undergraduate applicants.
- Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) eligibility narrowed. Public-private college partnership programs no longer qualify. PGWPs for college graduates now require a field of study tied to a labour shortage list.
- LMIA-based work permits restricted. The low-wage LMIA stream is closed in census metropolitan areas with unemployment above 6%, and the cap on low-wage workers per employer was cut from 20% to 10%.
- Spousal open work permits restricted to spouses of master's, PhD, and select professional students, plus spouses of high-skill foreign workers.
The political context
The cuts did not happen in a vacuum. Through 2023 and 2024, polling tracked a sharp drop in public support for immigration levels for the first time in a generation. Environics' fall 2024 survey found 58% of Canadians saying immigration was "too high," up from 27% in 2022. Housing affordability, healthcare access, and post-secondary capacity all became framed as immigration-linked.
The 2025 federal election entrenched the new consensus. Both the Liberals (under Mark Carney) and the Conservatives (under Pierre Poilievre) campaigned on lower immigration levels, with the difference between the two platforms measured in tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. The Liberal minority that emerged from the spring 2025 election carried forward the Miller framework, and the Carney government's first Levels Plan kept the trajectory.
In short, the cuts are bipartisan and structural. They are not a temporary correction.
What this means for you
The honest answer depends on your file. Here is how I read it stream by stream.
High-CRS Express Entry candidates (CRS 500+). You are still in good shape. General draws will keep happening, and you sit above any realistic cutoff. Get your documents ready and respond to ITAs quickly.
Borderline CRS candidates (CRS 440-490). General draws are largely out of reach. Your viable paths are: French (target CLB 7 in TEF or TCF), a category-based draw aligned with your work experience (healthcare, STEM, trades, transport, agriculture, education), a provincial nomination, or a Canadian study/work experience boost.
PNP applicants in process. Settle in. Provinces cannot draw faster than their allocation allows. If you have an enhanced nomination already in hand, your file is essentially safe. If you are waiting in a pool, watch the province's occupation list rather than the CRS.
Study permit hopefuls. The PAL requirement plus the per-province cap means competition for spots at reputable institutions is sharper. Choose programs that lead to a PGWP-eligible credential under the new field-of-study rules, and budget for higher tuition and proof-of-funds (now $22,895 for a single applicant).
Spousal sponsorship. Largely unaffected. The 70,000 target for spouses and dependants is intact and processing standards remain at 12 months in most cases.
Parents and grandparents. The 14,000 target is well below demand. The annual interest-to-sponsor lottery remains the bottleneck. Super visas remain the practical alternative for most families.
Will targets rise again after 2028?
Nobody knows, and any RCIC who tells you they do is selling something. The demographic pressure on Canada is real: an aging population, a shrinking native-born workforce, and labour shortages in healthcare and construction that the current intake does not solve. At the same time, housing supply has not caught up, public sentiment has not recovered, and no major federal party currently has an electoral incentive to argue for higher levels.
The most likely scenarios: a modest rebound to around 400,000 by 2029 if housing starts catch up, or a continued plateau at 365,000 if they do not. The composition will keep tilting toward Francophone, healthcare, and skilled-trades streams, and away from open economic intake.
Plan around the numbers, not against them
The Levels Plan is the single most important document in Canadian immigration each year. If your strategy was built around the assumptions of 2022 or 2023, it needs a refresh. Whether that means switching streams, retaking your language test in French, prioritizing a PNP-eligible job offer, or rethinking the timeline entirely, the right answer depends on your file.
If you want a clear-eyed read on which pathway still works for you under the 2026-2028 reality, book a consultation with our team. We will look at your numbers, your timeline, and your options, and tell you straight what the strongest move is. You can also start with our overviews of Express Entry and the Provincial Nominee Program if you want to do your own research first.
