FIRST READING: Immigration rates still at generational highs, even if population shrinking

On permanent immigration, meanwhile, Canada is still on track to chart one of the highest intake years of the last century. Photo by dennizn /Adobe Stock

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For the third consecutive quarter, the population of Canada has shrunk, capping off an unprecedented nine-month period that has seen the Canadian population go down by a combined 180,000 people.

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But the phenomenon is due almost entirely to Ottawa reining in the meteoric surge of temporary migration experienced by Canada between 2022 and 2024. On multiple other immigration streams intake continues to remain at generational if not all-time highs.

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This is particularly true in the realm of asylum seekers. As of the most recent Statistics Canada data, there is now an unprecedented high of 525,479 asylum claimants in the country; the equivalent of the entire population of Halifax.

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This is more than triple the figure of 166,780 asylum claimants charted in Canada just four years ago, on April 1, 2022. It works out to an average of Canada bringing in 245 new asylum claimants every day for the last four years.

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On permanent immigration, meanwhile, Canada is still on track to chart one of the highest intake years of the last century.

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In the first four months of 2026, 83,149 permanent immigrants entered Canada. If this rate holds, Canada will witness 330,000 new permanent immigrants by the end of 2026.

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Although this would be below the 380,000 permanent immigrants that the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has earmarked for 2026, it’s still well beyond what was considered normal for much of the last 100 years.

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Throughout the 1990s, Canada’s intake of permanent residents averaged 220,000 per year. The decade prior, in the 1980s, the average annual intake of permanent immigrants stood at just 107,000.

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As recently as 2014, Canada’s intake of just 260,400 immigrants was declared by Statistics Canada as “one of the highest levels in more than 100 years.”

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In fact, even if Canada hits below this year’s target of 380,000 permanent residents, 2026 is still poised to become the country’s sixth-highest permanent immigration year since the First World War.

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The only higher years would be a five-year streak from 2021 to 2025, when permanent immigration averaged 439,000 annually.

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On Wednesday, Statistics Canada confirmed that Canada’s estimated population had dropped by 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, representing a net decrease of 55,025 people.

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This was almost entirely due to a drop of 117,879 people in the category of “non-permanent residents.”

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Nevertheless, that category still remains at historic highs following an unprecedented surge of temporary migrants into Canada in the years immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic.