Canada to welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025

Canada has unveiled plans for a big increase in the number of immigrants entering the country, with a goal of seeing 500,000 people arrive each year by 2025 as it seeks to address a critical labor shortage

Canada has unveiled plans for a big increase in the number of immigrants entering the country, with a goal of seeing 500,000 people arrive each year by 2025 as it seeks to address a critical labor shortage.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser revealed the new plan on Tuesday. It puts a heavy emphasis on admitting more permanent residents with needed work skills and experience, alongside more-modest targets for family members and refugees. The opposition Conservative Party welcomed the plan.

“Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada,” Mr. Fraser said. “We have not seen such a focus on economic migration as we’ve seen in this immigration levels plan.”

The new plan envisions a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 people come in from outside the country in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, the immigration department says 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.

Most of those new arrivals will be what are known as economic immigrants, who will be expected to fill some of the roughly 1 million jobs that are currently sitting empty across various sectors of the economy.

“There were a million jobs available in the Canadian economy at a time when immigration already accounts for nearly all of our labor force growth,” Mr. Fraser said. “We cannot maximize our economic potential if we don’t embrace immigration.”

While the influx could put even more pressure on already scarce affordable housing in many parts of the country, Fraser suggested the new workers could actually enable the construction of more homes by addressing a shortage of tradespeople.