OTTAWA — August 30, 2026 — Canada needs better systems to track temporary residents and should further reduce their share of the population, according to an expert immigration panel preparing recommendations for the federal government.
Parisa Mahboubi, chair of the C.D. Howe Institute’s immigration targets council, says Canada lacks reliable information on how many international students and temporary workers actually leave after their permits expire, leaving policymakers effectively “flying in the dark.”
As of June 30, Canada had approximately 632,000 study permit holders and 1.5 million temporary work permit holders. Statistics Canada estimates the overall non-permanent resident population at about 2.5 million, or 6.2 per cent of Canada’s population.
The federal government aims to bring temporary residents below 5 per cent of the population by the end of 2027, but Mahboubi argues that 5 per cent should be considered a ceiling. She suggests a target closer to the historical range of 3 to 4 per cent.
New arrivals have already fallen sharply. Only 22,410 new international students arrived between January and June 2026, compared with 124,930 during the same period in 2024. Temporary worker arrivals declined from 244,985 to 98,130 over the same comparison period.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner also questioned whether the system is truly under control, arguing immigration levels should be tied more closely to Canada’s capacity to provide jobs, housing and health-care services.
The debate is increasingly shifting from simply how many people Canada admits to a more fundamental question: Does the country have an accurate picture of how many temporary residents remain after their legal status expires?