By Mata Press Service

An expert immigration council is urging Ottawa to cut temporary resident numbers further and better track people whose study or work permits expire, warning it still doesn’t know how many actually leave Canada.

The call comes from the C.D. Howe Institute’s Immigration Targets Council following a sharp reduction in international students over the past two years and a broader federal push to bring temporary immigration back under control.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada figures show 632,535 people held study permits in Canada as of June 30, 2026, down from more than 1.03 million two years earlier.

Another 1.55 million people held only work permits, including about 253,000 under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and 1.3 million under the much larger International Mobility Program.

But Parisa Mahboubi, chair of the C.D. Howe council and the institute’s associate director of research, says Ottawa still has a fundamental data problem as it attempts to shrink the temporary population.

“We don’t have good data on the number of non-permanent residents with expired student visas or work permits exiting the country,” Mahboubi said.

“So we need better data of that, it’s just an assumption that people will leave when they have no status.”

She described Canada as essentially “flying in the dark” when trying to determine how many temporary residents remain after their permits expire.

Federal documents acknowledge limitations in the system.

Temporary residents can extend their status, switch immigration categories or apply for permanent residency, making it difficult to determine how many people with expired permits have actually left.

The warning comes two years into one of the sharpest immigration policy reversals in recent Canadian history.

After years of rapidly expanding permanent and temporary immigration, Ottawa has capped international students, tightened foreign-worker programs and reduced planned permanent resident admissions.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has argued that immigration was running at unsustainable levels when he took office in 2025.

In July, Carney said immigration had been “too high” and blamed much of the increase on the rapid expansion of international students and temporary workers.

His government, he said, had since “taken back control” of the system.

Ottawa has committed to reducing temporary residents to less than five per cent of Canada’s population by the end of 2027.

The international student sector has already been transformed.

The number of study permit holders dropped from 1.03 million in June 2024 to 856,920 in June 2025 and 632,535 this June, a decline of almost 39 per cent in two years.

Temporary work permit numbers have proved more difficult to bring down.

There were about 1.41 million people holding only work permits in June 2024. By June 2026, that number had increased to approximately 1.55 million, driven largely by the International Mobility Program.

The traditional Temporary Foreign Worker Program accounted for only about one-sixth of those workers.

For the C.D. Howe council, the latest numbers reinforce concerns its members raised when they first met in October 2024.

At the time, Canada’s non-permanent resident population was approaching three million, housing shortages were worsening and unemployment was rising.

The council argued immigration policy should be built around whether Canada had enough housing, jobs, health-care capacity and other infrastructure to successfully absorb newcomers.

Its central argument was that Canada should aim to become more prosperous rather than simply more populous.

Most members supported gradually reducing both permanent and temporary immigration while avoiding cuts severe enough to create labour shortages or damage economic growth.

Some suggested permanent immigration should eventually settle at about 0.6 to 0.8 per cent of Canada's population annually.

Ottawa has since moved substantially in that direction.

The Carney government's current plan calls for 380,000 permanent residents annually from 2026 through 2028, down sharply from the previous government's plan to admit 500,000 a year.

Temporary arrivals are being cut more aggressively, with Ottawa targeting 385,000 new temporary resident arrivals in 2026 and 370,000 in each of the following two years.

But Mahboubi and other immigration researchers say controlling new arrivals solves only part of the problem.

Canada must also manage the large temporary population already here.

Many arrived as international students or workers expecting they might eventually qualify for permanent residency, but there are nowhere near enough permanent immigration spaces to accommodate all of them.

That leaves Ottawa facing a difficult question as hundreds of thousands of permits expire.

Temporary residents can extend their status, switch immigration streams, gain permanent residency or leave Canada. Those who remain without legal status can face enforcement and removal.

Canada Border Services Agency records international departures by air and land, but immigration officials must match those records against permit status, extensions and subsequent applications to determine whether someone has actually overstayed.

Statistics Canada has also begun examining entry-and-exit records to improve estimates.

One recent study found that among study permit holders from a 2022 cohort whose permits had expired and who were confirmed to have left Canada by January 2025, 84.3 per cent departed before their permits expired.

But the study did not resolve the broader question of how many expired permit holders remain in Canada.

The C.D. Howe council has also called for more scrutiny of who Canada selects for permanent residency.

Members favour a stronger focus on education, skills, language ability and long-term earning potential, while questioning programs built around short-term labour shortages and some provincial nominee streams.

The council has also backed tighter eligibility for post-graduation work permits, particularly for programs with weak labour-market outcomes.

Ottawa has since introduced many of those restrictions, limiting post-graduation work permits for some programs, tightening spousal work permits and imposing caps on international study permits.

Canada still has strong demographic reasons to maintain immigration. Its population is aging, fertility remains low and newcomers account for much of the growth in the workforce.

Businesses in agriculture, construction, health care, hospitality and other sectors also continue to rely heavily on foreign labour.

But the C.D. Howe council says Canada needs fewer temporary residents, more selective permanent immigration and much better information about who is actually in the country.

Two years after Ottawa began applying the brakes, the student population has fallen dramatically.

Yet with more than 1.5 million work permit holders still in Canada and uncertainty over how many people leave after losing legal status, the council says cutting new permits alone will not restore control of the system.