The Canadian government unexpectedly suspended a pilot program aimed at attracting qualified refugees to fill job vacancies, at a time when Canadian authorities are taking measures to reduce the number of immigrants arriving in the country.
The Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot Program, which had been underway since 2018, offered qualified refugees “to immigrate to Canada through economic programs” to offer the country’s companies “a new group of qualified candidates to fill job vacancies.”
The program has allowed refugees to arrive in the country as engineers, health assistants or other high-demand professions.
But in a message on the program’s website, the Canadian government indicated that it was no longer accepting new applications after having reached its quota for 2025.
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The Globe and Mail newspaper pointed out this Tuesday that Canadian authorities have so far only admitted half, about 1,000 people, of the initial goal established and that there is no date for the restart of the program.
Canadian authorities also warned that processing applications already submitted may take up to three years.
The suspension of the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot Program comes shortly after Ottawa stopped, also without a restart date, on December 19, another immigration pilot program to attract workers who care for the elderly, individuals with disabilities and children.
Since 2024, the Canadian government has taken measures to drastically reduce the number of immigrants arriving in the country each year, both permanent residents and temporary foreign workers and international students.
Until last year, Canada was the G7 country with the highest population growth, 2.7% annually, thanks to the massive arrival of immigrants that went from 300,000 in 2015 to almost 500,000 in 2024.
Added to these figures are international students (682,889 arrived in 2023) and temporary foreign workers (close to one million in 2023).
The Canadian government now wants to reduce the proportion of temporary foreign workers in the country from the current 7% to 5% in the coming years, so in November it said it will only accept 385,000 temporary residents in 2026 and 370,000 in 2027 and 2028, in addition to cutting the number of international students and temporary foreign workers by more than 50%.
The measures adopted have already begun to have an effect: on December 17, the public body Statistics Canada (EC) said that, for the first time in decades, Canada’s population fell in the third quarter of the year by 0.2% with the loss of 76,068 people.
With information from EFE
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