Canada\u2019s immigration department has made clear that its top-line targets for annual permanent residence (PR) admissions don\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n
On a government web page that went live on July 21, 2026, the department confirms that the levels plan targets for 2026 and 2027 do not count PR admissions under two \u201cone-time initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assess your eligibility for Canadian permanent residence The levels plan<\/a> target for “overall” permanent residence admissions for both 2026 and 2027 is set at 380,000 per year.<\/p>\n But those figures exclude PR<\/a> admissions of up to 115,000 protected persons<\/a> and 33,000 in-Canada workers<\/a> over the same two years.<\/p>\n The cumulative total of the government\u2019s planned PR admissions for the period 2026\u20132027 amounts to 908,000, averaging out to 454,000 annually.<\/p>\n The newly launched web page, \u201cUnderstanding permanent residence numbers in Canada<\/a>,\u201d presents a bar chart displaying monthly numbers of PR admissions from Jan 2026\u2013May 2026, breaking out the levels plan PR admissions versus the one-time initiative PR admissions into two separate bars.<\/p>\n Of the 128,000 PRs already admitted to Canada in 2026 as of May 2026, those admitted through the one-time initiatives make up about 14.4%.<\/p>\n As of May 2026, the numbers of PRs admitted through one-time initiatives sit at 46% (9,100) of the annual target of 20,000 for in-Canada workers<\/a>, and 20% (9,300) of the annual target of 46,000 for in-Canada protected persons.<\/p>\n The launch of the new web page comes on the heels of an update to the government\u2019s backlog page<\/a>, which as of July 21 began to present a breakdown of PR applications slated for processing this year versus those waitlisted for following years to conform with the levels plan annual admissions targets.<\/p>\n On July 15, the federal government shut the door to sponsoring parents and grandparents for PR<\/a>, reporting 50,900 Parents and Grandparents Program<\/a> (PGP) PR applications in inventory, with PGP PR admissions set to 15,000 per year for the years 2026\u20132028 under the levels plan.<\/p>\n The new web page on PR admissions follows a similar format to the \u201cUnderstanding student and temporary worker numbers in Canada<\/a>\u201d page, which the government took live in August 2025.<\/p>\n Two figures for government spending<\/p>\n The two sets of PR admissions numbers were first released in Budget 2025 last November.<\/p>\n In Budget 2025, the Canadian government also presented, for the first time, two categories for planned federal spending: a breakdown of \u201cday-to-day operating spending\u201d versus \u201ccapital investments.\u201d Under this framework, the budget projected that 100% of the deficit would be directed toward capital investments by fiscal year 2028\u20132029.<\/p>\n
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