Canada's immigration minister is indicating more permanent residence pathways will be made available to talent residing in Canada.

In a new interview with Bloomberg, Marco Mendicino says Canada is looking at ways to expedite transitions to permanent residence for temporary foreign workers, international students, and asylum seekers who are living in Canada during the coronavirus pandemic.

There would be two significant benefits of this policy approach. First, it would help Canada increase its immigration levels and offset the decline it is currently experiencing due to the pandemic. Secondly, plenty of federal government research shows those residing in Canada prior to becoming permanent residents integrate quickly into the labour market. This is even more important now due to the damage the pandemic has caused on the Canadian labour market.

Canada is aiming to welcome over 400,000 new permanent residents annually under its new Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023.

However, Canada will fall short of its goal to welcome 341,000 new immigrants in 2020 since the pandemic has disrupted global mobility.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Canada held a number of program-specific Express Entry draws to facilitate more PR transitions for students and workers in the country. These resulted in Express Entry draws where invitations to apply were only issued to Canadian Experience Class and Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) candidates.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has since expanded Express Entry draws to include Federal Skilled Worker Program and Federal Skilled Trades Program candidates, including those currently living overseas.

Recognizing that the pandemic may continue to hinder the ability of global talent to enter Canada in the near future, Mendicino told Bloomberg that Canada will be looking “at that domestic immigration pool in very short order to identify the workers, the students, the asylum seekers who have the skill sets that with essential services in the economy.”

This means that IRCC will likely announce changes to immigration programs to help Canada achieve this goal.

The changes will support Canada's economic growth in the short run, and over the long run. IRCC and Statistics Canada research shows that students and foreign workers integrate quickly into the labour market and are very successful in the economy since they are fluent in English or French, have Canadian education and work experience, and Canadian connections.

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