Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) meets an immigrant family from Afghanistan in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada), May 6, 2022. NATHAN DENETTE/AP
A record that is set to be regularly surpassed in the years to come: In 2022, Canada welcomed 431,645 new permanent residents, according to official data from the federal immigration service released on Tuesday, January 3. That’s 30,000 more than the previous year, and we have to go back to 1913 to find an influx of similar significance.
Justin Trudeau’s administration intends to increase this cash flow for migration in the coming years. In the federal immigration plan passed in November 2022, he pledged to open its doors to 1,450,000 new immigrants over three years, with a peak of 500,000 arrivals in 2025. Over the next decade, Ottawa predicts that people from abroad will represent 30% of Canada’s population (38 million people), up from one in five in 2011.
With this unique migration policy within the G7 countries, the Canadian authorities are pursuing two goals. The first is to offset the aging of the population – 5 million Canadians will retire by the end of the decade – the second is to address a glaring labor shortage. Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen recently mentioned the number of “one million job vacancies” across the country.
Choice at the entrance of the territory
The majority of new residents in 2022 were also admitted as part of economic migration; Either the new workers have specific job skills that are lacking locally, or they have demonstrated ability to set up businesses in Canada. This selection at the entrance to the territory, combined with an active integration policy, gives an atypical picture of this population: 36% of doctors, 41% of engineers and one in three business leaders in Canada are of immigrant origin.
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But despite government efforts to attract newcomers to their depopulated areas, major metropolitan areas remained the most attractive in 2022: just over a quarter of them intended to settle in Greater Toronto, the country’s largest city, followed by Vancouver (British Columbia) and Montreal (Quebec). Immigration from Asia alone – India, China and Pakistan – accounts for a third of the new arrivals.
Canada continues to welcome asylum seekers and refugees. In 2015, the country opened its doors to 25,000 Syrian refugees in less than 100 days. After the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021, the government pledged to take in 40,000 Afghans, half of whom were already able to settle on Canadian territory.
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