Immigration Trends in Canada: What a deeper dive into the numbers tells us about the first half of 2025

April 23, 2026

Last October 2024, the Government of Canada announced a reduction to its permanent immigration targets to align with the country’s economic needs from 500,000 down to 395,000 in 2025; from 500,000 to 380,000 in 2026; and setting a target of 365,000 in 2027. With respect to the breakdown by categories, the economic category remained by far the largest proportion of admissions to reach some 62% by 2027. Support for family reunification continues through the family category, which maintains a rate of 22% of overall permanent resident admissions. Canada’s strong and proud tradition of offering protection to those most in need is evident through the sustained targets for Government Assisted Refugees, which contributes to the resettled refugees and protected persons category rate of 15% of overall permanent resident admissions. 21,200 admissions are provided to commitments made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds over three years (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/notices/supplementary-immigration-levels-2025-2027.html) Meeting these targets is not simple given the need to account for regional priorities, pre existing commitments and other considerations. That which follows will look at the immigrant admission numbers for the first two quarters of 2025 (January 1 to June 30th ) and the initial adjustments that were made and how they compare with the admission numbers for the same two quarters over the period January 1-June 30th, 2024. There has been much speculation about whether the Government will reach the targets but much less attention directed at how it will go about doing so and what categories of immigrants will be most affected, what regions of the country will feel the impact and how it numbers in immigrant countries of origin will be shift accordingly. That which follows will provide detailed analysis of evolving migration over the first six months of 2025 and, in particular, see how they compare with the same period over the previous year.