Hi Canuck78,
Part of the announced policy, besides reducing annual quotas, is to reduce the temporary residents. Protected persons falls under this category.
As of Q1 2025, there are 457,000 people as per Statistics Canada under the Asylum category (refugee applicants, protected persons and related groups - including rejected, withdrawn and abandoned applications). Knowing that there are 280,000 pending applications before IRB as of March 2025, this means that there are almost 180,000 files including protected persons, rejected, withdrawn and abandoned applications..
Assuming that there are at least 50,000 as rejected, withdrawn and abandoned, this means that there are almost 130,000 files for protected persons applying for PR..
The immigration minister said earlier that the majority (60%) of new immigrants (around 360,000 annually) will be from inside Canada.
Despite all of this, refugees, whether claimants or protected persons, are always delayed.
Refugees (whether refugee claimants, protected persons or other refugee categories like government-assisted or G5, etc.) definitely feel grateful, especially when comparing Canada to other countries, yet... tens of thousands of refugees are kept separated from their families for years and years..
The immigration minister was referring to the majority of new economic immigrants will come from temporary residents already in Canada. Canada has to balance out the number of protected people and refugees who get PR with economic immigrants and PRs/citizens sponsoring dependent family members (who must prove they can support themselves financially). Protected people and refugees don’t have to show they are employed, financially self-sufficient, have good language skills in English/French, etc. so they are only awarded a certain percentage of the yearly PR quota.