Government Of Canada Announces 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan
November 1, 2022
The Government of Canada is planning a massive increase in the number of immigrants entering Canada, with a goal of seeing 500,000 people arrive each year by 2025.
Today, Tuesday, November 1, 2022, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, released Canada’s 2023–2025 Immigration Levels Plan. The plan puts an emphasis on increasing the number immigrants who will be admitted to Canada based on their work skills or experience over the next three years. The ultimate goal is to help Canadian businesses find workers and to attract the skills required in key sectors—including health care, skilled trades, manufacturing and technology.
The Government of Canada is setting targets in the new levels plan of 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. The plan has a long-term focus on economic growth, with just over 60% of admissions in the economic class by 2025. The number of economic immigrants to be admitted to Canada from 2023 to 2025 is projected to be as follows:
2023: 266,210
2023: 281,135
2024: 301,250
The plan comes on the heels of a report from Statistics Canada that a record 23 per cent of people in Canada are landed immigrants or permanent residents.
Canada to Resume Express Entry Draws in July 2022 to Address Canada’s Labour Shortage – 6 Month Processing Times
April 22, 2022
As Canada continues to recover from COVID-19, there are hundreds of thousands of vacant positions in all sectors across the country that employers are looking to fill. The Government of Canada recognizes that Immigration has become increasingly more important to fuel the Canadian economy. Canada’s strong economic growth is outpacing the country’s ability to find and keep workers.
For these reasons, on April 22, 2022, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), announced that Express Entry draws will soon resume and that invitations for candidates to apply for permanent residence will begin in early July 2022. This includes candidates in the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program and the Canadian Experience Class.
Travel restrictions throughout most of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 delayed the processing of overseas applications, which led to an increase in the size of the processing inventory. To manage this inventory, IRCC temporarily paused invitations to apply under the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program and the Canadian Experience Class. Minister Fraser announced that when invitations to apply resume in early July 2022, the vast majority of new applications will be processed within the 6-month service standard.
What does this mean?
If you are an existing client of Abrams & Krochak and have been delaying proceeding with your Express Entry Application, now is the perfect time to resume the processing of your Application so that your Express Entry Online Profile can be created and uploaded to the IRCC website prior to draws resuming in July 2022. If you have any questions pertaining to your file and the status of your Application, please send an e-mail to info@akcanada.com.
If you are not yet a client of Abrams & Krochak but had your eligibility to immigrate to Canada under Express Entry favourably assessed by the firm and wish to proceed with your proposed Canadian Immigration plans, please follow the instructions that were previously provided to you in our “Favourable Eligibility Assessment”. If you no longer have those instructions, please send an e-mail to askus@akcanada.com and we will be pleased to provide them to you, again.
If you have not had your eligibility to immigrate to Canada under Express Entry assessed by Abrams & Krochak OR you wish to have your eligibility to immigrate to Canada under Express Entry reassessed by the firm, please complete our Express Entry Online Eligibility Assessment Questionnaire at https://www.akcanada.com/assessment1.php.
Government of Canada Announces 2022-2024 Immigration Levels Plan
February 14, 2022
Today, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, tabled the 2022‒2024 Immigration Levels Plan. The Plan aims to help the Canadian economy recover by fueling post-pandemic growth.
In 2021, Canada welcomed more than 405,000 new permanent residents—the most immigrants in a single year in Canada’s history. Despite having regained many of the jobs lost during the pandemic, there are still hundreds of thousands of positions in all sectors waiting to be filled. Immigration already accounts for almost 100% of labour force growth, and with 5 million Canadians set to retire by the end of this decade, the economic need for increased Immigration has never been higher.
To ensure Canada has the workers it needs to fill critical labour market gaps and support a strong economy into the future, the 2022–2024 Immigration Levels Plan aims to continue welcoming immigrants at a rate of about 1% of Canada’s population, including 431,645 permanent residents in 2022, 447,055 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024. Nearly 60% of new immigrants to Canada will be in the Economic Class (i.e. skilled workers, skilled tradespeople, provincial nominees, business immigrants).
To support these increased levels, the Government of Canada plans to modernize Canada’s Immigration system and reduce inventories to create predictable processing times for Immigration Applications.
Ontario to make it easier for immigrants to work in their professions
October 21, 2021
[REPRODUCED FROM THE CANADIAN PRESS]
Ontario is set to introduce legislation that would make it easier for immigrants to get licensed to work in professions that match their areas of expertise.
Labour Minister Monte McNaughton says the proposed legislation would, if passed, prevent many regulatory bodies from requiring immigrants to have Canadian work experience to get licensed.
It would also standardize English-language testing requirements and ensure licensing applications are processed faster.
McNaughton says the changes would help remove barriers immigrants often face when trying to work in their professions.
“It really is an injustice when you think of only 25 per cent of immigrants in Ontario work actually in jobs and professions that they were trained for,” he said in an interview.
“It’s all about improving their lives, ensuring that they get bigger paychecks and more worker protections.”
McNaughton says Ontario is facing a labour shortage as some 293,000 jobs are unfilled across the province.
The proposed legislation would apply to licensing bodies governing engineers, architects, teachers, accountants and social workers, among other. But it would not affect those regulating medical professions, including those that licence doctors and nurses.
The legislation would also help internationally trained workers in 23 trades, including electricians, plumbers and hoisting engineers.
Licensing bodies would still be able to apply for exemptions that could require Canadian work experience, but that would need government approval, McNaughton said.
“They have to make a health and safety case, which would come to the minister for approval,” he said, noting that he hoped to see the changes brought by the legislation take effect in two years.
The director of engineering training projects at ACCES Employment, an organization that help newcomers find suitable jobs in Ontario, said removing the Canadian work experience requirement would help immigrant engineers get licensed and hired a lot faster.
Gabriela Tavaru said immigrant engineers cannot work in their profession before they get their professional license, regardless of how many years of experience they had before they came to Ontario.
“Starting a job, performance evaluation, the whole system, it’s new. So it’s a little bit too difficult for any immigrant and especially for regulated professionals like engineers to navigate this process and get a job,” she said.
She said a maximum of four years of international experience is recognized by the licensing body for engineers in Ontario, but a minimum of one year of Canadian work experience in the field is also required. Immigrant engineers have to work for a year under the supervision of a licensed Canadian engineer to gain that experience.
“This is the problem: you cannot get a job to get your license,” she said. “They cannot be engineers. They cannot sign contracts. They cannot be called engineer, but they can work, for example, as estimators, project managers, field coordinators.”
Economic outlook says Canada among leaders in post-pandemic recovery
June 25, 2021
In a recent economic outlook report co-authored by Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, Canada’s economy is projected to strongly rebound this year as COVID-19 vaccination rates rise and things return to more pre-pandemic conditions, with growth easing slowly between now and the end of 2023.
Dodge says that he expects growth to accelerate in the second half of 2021, with real GDP growing 5.5 per cent between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2021. For 2022, the outlook is for 2.6 per cent during 2022 and 1. 9 per cent during 2023.
Economic output should return to its pre-pandemic level by the third quarter of 2021 and back to its pre-pandemic trend level by the end of 2022.
With all of this having been said and Canada’s economy on the rebound, now is an excellent time to consider immigrating to Canada. If you have not already had your eligibility to immigrate to Canada assessed free of charge by Abrams & Krochak, you may do so by visiting https://www.akcanada.com/assessment1.php. If you have already had your eligibility to immigrate to Canada favourably assessed by Abrams & Krochak and wish to proceed with your proposed Canadian Immigration plans, follow the instructions at the bottom of the favourable eligibility assessment that you received, via e-mail, from the firm or send a message to askus@akcanada.com.