From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson and Steven Globerman

From 2000 to 2015, annual immigration averaged 617,800 immigrants, compared to a more than doubling to 1.4 million annually from 2016 to
2024 (excluding 2020), according to a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent non-partisan Canadian think-tank.

“Over the past decade, Canada’s immigration numbers have skyrocketed, most starkly since 2021,” said Jock Finlayson, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and co-author of Canada’s Changing Immigration Patterns, 2000–2024.

The study finds from 2000 to 2015, immigration (including temporary foreign workers and international students) grew on average by 3.5 per cent per year. However, from 2016 to 2024 (excluding 2020) immigration grew annually at 21.3 per cent—more than six times the 2000-2015 pace.

The sharp rise in recent years reflects both planned increases in permanent immigrant inflows as well as unprecedented and largely unplanned growth in the numbers of temporary foreign workers, international students, and asylum seekers. For example, in 2024 alone, 485,600 permanent immigrants entered Canada, along with 518,200 international students and nearly one million (912,900) temporary foreign workers.

However, due to concerns about the impact of unprecedented in-migration on housing affordability, employment opportunities (or lack thereof), access to health care and other issues, late last year the federal government unveiled plans to substantially reduce immigration levels over the 2025-27 period, affecting permanent immigrants, international students, and other temporary visa holders.

The composition of immigration also changed dramatically during this period. From 2000 to 2015, the average share of total immigrants in the permanent category was 42.1 per cent while the non-permanent share (mainly international students and temporary workers) was 57.9 per cent. From 2016 to 2024 (excluding Covid 2020), permanent immigrants averaged 27.7 per cent of total in-migration versus 72.3 per cent for non-permanent.

“We’re in the midst of a housing crisis in Canada, and the unfortunate truth is we lack the necessary infrastructure to accommodate immigration at the 2022-24 rate,” said Steven Globerman, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and study co-author.

“While the reductions announced late last year have been confirmed by the new government, the levels of immigration over the next two year will still be well above historic benchmarks.”

This study is the first in a series of papers from the authors on immigration.

Canada’s Changing Immigration Patterns, 2000—2024

• Immigration, after 2000 and especially after 2015, is characterized by substantial increases in the absolute number of immigrants admitted, as well the share admitted as temporary foreign workers and international students.
• For example, from 2000 to 2015, the total number of immigrants increased at a simple average annual rate of 4% compared to 15% from 2016 to 2024. As well, permanent admissions as a share of total admissions declined by .83 percentage points per year from 2000 to 2015 and by 1.1 percentage points per year from 2016 to 2024.
• These recent developments reflect changes in government policy. In particular, the International Mobility Program (IMP) of 2014 enabled Canadian employers to bring in greater numbers of temporary workers from abroad to fill lower-paying jobs.
• The Advisory Council on Economic Growth appointed by the Trudeau government in early 2016 recommended substantial increases in permanent immigration, as well as in the number of international students who would become eligible for permanent status after acquiring Canadian educational credentials. The Trudeau government enthusiastically embraced the recommendation.
• Recent immigrants to Canada seem better equipped to participate in the labour market than earlier cohorts. For example, over the period from 2011 to 2021, the percentage of established immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher increased, and the vast majority of admitted immigrants speak at least one of the official languages. Moreover, recent immigrants enjoy higher employment rates than did earlier cohorts.
• Nevertheless, public concern about the impact of increased immigration—primarily on the affordability of housing—has led the federal government to reduce planned levels of future immigration substantially.

Jock Finlayson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Steven Globerman

Senior Fellow and Addington Chair in Measurement, Fraser Institute

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

While running for the job of leading the country, Prime Minister Carney promised to defend the Canada Health Act (CHA) and build a health-care system Canadians can be proud of. Unfortunately, to have any hope of accomplishing the latter promise, he must break the former and reform the CHA.

As long as Ottawa upholds and maintains the CHA in its current form, Canadians will not have a timely, accessible and high-quality universal health-care system they can be proud of.

Consider for a moment the remarkably poor state of health care in Canada today. According to international comparisons of universal health-care systems, Canadians endure some of the lowest access to physicians, medical technologies and hospital beds in the developed world, and wait in queues for health care that routinely rank among the longest in the developed world. This is all happening despite Canadians paying for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal-access health-care systems.

None of this is new. Canada’s poor ranking in the availability of services—despite high spending—reaches back at least two decades. And wait times for health care have nearly tripled since the early 1990s. Back then, in 1993, Canadians could expect to wait 9.3 weeks for medical treatment after GP referral compared to 30 weeks in 2024.

But fortunately, we can find the solutions to our health-care woes in other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia, which all provide more timely access to quality universal care. Every one of these countries requires patient cost-sharing for physician and hospital services, and allows private competition in the delivery of universally accessible services with money following patients to hospitals and surgical clinics. And all these countries allow private purchases of health care, as this reduces the burden on the publicly-funded system and creates a valuable pressure valve for it.

And this brings us back to the CHA, which contains the federal government’s requirements for provincial policymaking. To receive their full federal cash transfers for health care from Ottawa (totalling nearly $55 billion in 2025/26) provinces must abide by CHA rules and regulations.

And therein lies the rub—the CHA expressly disallows requiring patients to share the cost of treatment while the CHA’s often vaguely defined terms and conditions have been used by federal governments to discourage a larger role for the private sector in the delivery of health-care services.

Clearly, it’s time for Ottawa’s approach to reflect a more contemporary understanding of how to structure a truly world-class universal health-care system.

Prime Minister Carney can begin by learning from the federal government’s own welfare reforms in the 1990s, which reduced federal transfers and allowed provinces more flexibility with policymaking. The resulting period of provincial policy innovation reduced welfare dependency and government spending on social assistance (i.e. savings for taxpayers). When Ottawa stepped back and allowed the provinces to vary policy to their unique circumstances, Canadians got improved outcomes for fewer dollars.

We need that same approach for health care today, and it begins with the federal government reforming the CHA to expressly allow provinces the ability to explore alternate policy approaches, while maintaining the foundational principles of universality.

Next, the Carney government should either hold cash transfers for health care constant (in nominal terms), reduce them or eliminate them entirely with a concordant reduction in federal taxes. By reducing (or eliminating) the pool of cash tied to the strings of the CHA, provinces would have greater freedom to pursue reform policies they consider to be in the best interests of their residents without federal intervention.

After more than four decades of effectively mandating failing health policy, it’s high time to remove ambiguity and minimize uncertainty—and the potential for politically motivated interpretations—in the CHA. If Prime Minister Carney wants Canadians to finally have a world-class health-care system then can be proud of, he should allow the provinces to choose their own set of universal health-care policies. The first step is to fix, rather than defend, the 40-year-old legislation holding the provinces back.