This is from a larger publication, Alternative federal budget 2026-27: Bridge to independence
Introduction
Canada’s immigration system is being restructured at remarkable speed, with little to no public consultation or input, and with all a wide variety of problems, such as the recent court challenge of the federal government’s new immigration law, Bill C-12.1Parliament of Canada, Bill C-12: An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of Canada’s borders and the integrity of the Canadian immigration system and respecting other related security measures, March 26, 2026, https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/45-1/bill/C-12/royal-assent. Over the past year, the federal government has moved from restriction to retrenchment: lowering immigration levels, shrinking temporary resident pathways, narrowing access to refugee protection, introducing new health-care costs for refugee claimants, and cutting the settlement infrastructure that helps newcomers live, work, study, reunite with family, and participate in Canadian society.
The federal government is justifying this shift as economic discipline. But the government’s own documents continue to acknowledge that immigration is central to Canada’s labour market, rural and remote communities, innovation, and long-term economic future. The contradiction is stark: Canada continues to rely on migrants to sustain its economy, communities, and public institutions, while dismantling the pathways, protections, services, and family reunification systems that make migration just, humane, rights-respecting, and consistent with Canada’s international obligations. The result is not a more sustainable immigration system. It is a more precarious one.
For racialized communities, the impacts are not neutral. Federally-produced precarious immigration status produces and maintains poverty. Racialized migrants, women, migrant workers, international students, refugee claimants, people without status, 2SLGBTQI+ migrants, disabled migrants, and survivors of gender-based violence are more likely to experience exclusion from housing, employment protections, health care, income supports, legal aid, and family reunification.
Overview
The 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan2Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2025 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, November 20, 2025, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament-immigration-2025.html. confirms the federal government’s new restrictionist direction. Permanent resident admissions are being stabilized at 380,000 per year, while the target for new temporary residents is being significantly reduced. The federal government says this will keep permanent resident arrivals below one per cent of the population and reduce the temporary resident population below five per cent.
International students have been particularly affected. The number of study permit holders has fallen sharply, and the federal government has set a lower 2026 study permit target. The federal government has cut new international student permit levels dramatically, and arrivals have declined concurrently compared with previous years, while new temporary foreign worker arrivals have also declined. These changes have disrupted the lives of students and workers who came to Canada under one set of expectations and now face rapidly changing pathways to work, study, and permanent residence, not to mention destabilizing the post-secondary sector (see the post-secondary education chapter).
Meanwhile, Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act,3Parliament of Canada, Bill C-12: An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of Canada’s borders and the integrity of the Canadian immigration system and respecting other related security measures, March 26, 2026, https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/45-1/bill/C-12/royal-assent. received royal assent in March 2026. It renders ineligible any asylum claims made on or after June 3, 2025, (including if the person is making their claim more than one year after their first entry into Canada or if they entered Canada at irregular entry points and made a claim after 14 days—two previously common asylum claim routes). These claims will no longer be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
These changes deepen the harm caused by the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. Rather than ensuring access to a fair refugee hearing, Canada is increasingly using technical timing rules, border rules, and procedural exclusions to keep people out of the refugee determination system. This will disproportionately affect people fleeing gender-based violence, anti-Black racism, religious persecution, homophobia and transphobia, disability-related persecution, and other forms of harm who may not be able to claim protection immediately after arrival.
The federal government is also narrowing health access for migrants. Beginning May 1, 2026, Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) beneficiaries must pay a co-payment for each eligible prescription medication and a percentage of the cost of other eligible supplemental and preventive health products and services, including dental care, vision care, counselling, and assistive devices. Basic doctor and hospital care remain covered, but the new co-payments create immediate barriers to treatment for people with little or no income. This is particularly concerning because access to early health care prevents serious health issues and costly emergency interventions caused by delayed care. The likely outcome isn’t a shift in expenses to refugees, rather it’s the avoidance of treatment that will lead to higher cost interventions later and needless suffering in the meantime.
The federal government is also significantly cutting support for federally-funded settlement services at the very moment migrants face more complex legal and economic precarity. While other departments face 15 per cent cuts due to the Comprehensive Economic Review, settlement funding is subject to additional reductions. This is because the funding formula depends on the number of arriving immigrants, and lower immigration numbers lead to further cuts. The Parliamentary Budget Officer4 has identified IRCC among the five government agencies with the highest level of funding cuts, with an immediate and effective annual budget reduction of 26 to 28 per cent. Settlement agencies across the country have warned that beyond harming both the people who rely on settlement services and the sector itself, these cuts directly contradict the government’s stated goal of strengthening Canada’s economy. These cuts will be borne not only by newcomers, but also by a workforce made up largely of racialized women, immigrants, and refugees working in underpaid social service jobs.
Canada’s child welfare system systematically failed to apply for citizenship status for children who arrived in Canada and were placed in state care, and as a result many of those children lost their immigration status and risk deportation. The previous government had committed to introducing legislation to close this policy gap. Bill C-274,4Parliament of Canada, BILL C-274: An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, April 20, 2026, https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/45-1/bill/C-274/first-reading. a private member’s bill, now proposes a clear pathway to citizenship for these children and would protect them from removal while their citizenship applications are pending.
Policymakers are painting migrants as the scapegoat for decades of government underinvestment in housing, health care, schools, transit, legal aid, and settlement services. The real failure is not migration; it is that governments have depended on migrants to sustain Canada’s economy while refusing to invest in the systems that allow all communities to live with dignity. A fair and rights-based immigration system requires expanded status, family reunification, services, housing, health care, and labour protections for all residents, regardless of immigration status.
Actions
The AFB will repeal the harmful refugee and immigration restrictions introduced through Bill C-12. It will restore access to the Immigration and Refugee Board for claimants excluded by the one-year and 14-day bars. Further, it will end the retroactive application of asylum ineligibility rules and ensure all people seeking protection have access to a fair, independent, oral refugee hearing.
The AFB will rescind the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. The STCA denies equitable access to refugee protection and pushes people into unsafe crossings. Canada should restore full access to refugee claims at the Canada-U.S. border.
The AFB will launch a comprehensive regularization program. It will create a one-step permanent residence pathway for all people without permanent status, including undocumented people, rejected claimants, temporary workers, students, caregivers, and others who have built lives, families, and communities in Canada.
The AFB will restore and expand permanent resident pathways. It will reverse the shift toward long-term temporariness by increasing family-class, humanitarian, refugee, caregiver, and low-wage worker pathways, and ending the two-step system that leaves people in Canada for years without secure status.
The AFB will guarantee permanent status on arrival and open work permits for all workers. It will eliminate closed and employer-specific work permits across all labour migration programs so migrant workers have labour mobility, access to justice, and the practical ability to leave abusive employers without risking deportation.
The AFB will create binding national employment and housing standards for migrant agricultural and low-wage workers in collaboration with provinces and territories. It will make employer participation in migrant worker programs conditional on enforceable standards for wages, housing, heat protections, health and safety, transportation, inspections, and access to complaints mechanisms.
The AFB will ensure access to federal benefits and income supports regardless of immigration status. Migrants who pay into Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan, workplace insurance systems, and other public programs must be able to access the benefits they fund.
The AFB will cancel the IFHP co-payment policy and expand status-blind health care. It will restore full IFHP coverage for prescription drugs, dental care, vision care, counselling, assistive devices, and other supplemental care, and work with provinces and territories to guarantee health coverage for all migrants, regardless of status.
The AFB will reverse settlement services funding cuts and rebuild immigrant and refugee-serving infrastructure. It will restore and increase funding to settlement agencies, legal clinics, migrant worker support centres, and community-based organizations, recognizing that settlement services are economic infrastructure, not discretionary charity.
The AFB will protect legal aid and community-based immigration supports. It will increase federal support for refugee and immigration legal aid, including for Bill C-12-affected claimants, Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) applications, detention reviews, humanitarian applications, and judicial reviews. It will remove barriers that prevent trusted community organizations from providing basic immigration navigation and support.
The AFB will end immigration detention. In the interim, it will implement alternatives to detention, including community-based supervision models.
The AFB will create a permanent citizenship pathway for children and youth in care. Enact Bill C-274, It will implement legislation that creates a clear path to citizenship for children in care who came to Canada as minors and protects them from removal while their citizenship applications are pending.
The AFB will mandate an independent racial-equity audit of the immigration and refugee system. It will review approval rates, refusal reasons, processing times, automated triage tools, enforcement practices, detention decisions, and removals by country of origin, race, gender, disability, language, religion, caste, and other relevant factors, with binding remedies and public reporting.
The AFB will regulate AI and automated decision-making in immigration. It will require transparency, independent audits, notice to applicants, appeal rights, public Algorithmic Impact Assessments, and a prohibition on automated tools that reproduce discrimination or undermine procedural fairness.
The AFB will fully implement independent Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) oversight. It will ensure the Public Complaints and Review Commission is adequately funded, accessible to migrants regardless of status, empowered to conduct systemic reviews, and required to report publicly on racism, use of force, detention, removals, border practices, and treatment of refugee claimants.
The AFB will ratify and implement international migrant-rights obligations. Canada should ratify the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and relevant International Labour Organization conventions, including the Migrant Workers Convention, the Migrant Workers Supplementary Provisions Convention, and the Domestic Workers Convention.
