Canada’s immigration department will accelerate permanent residence for up to 33,000 temporary foreign workers in smaller and rural communities, fast-tracking applications through a one-time initiative first flagged in last year’s federal budget.
Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab announced progress on the In-Canada Workers Initiative, which draws from existing application inventories rather than opening new intake. Eligible workers must have lived outside Canada’s major urban centres for at least two years and have applied for permanent residence through the Provincial Nominee Program, the Atlantic Immigration Program, community immigration pilots, caregiver pilots, or the AgriFood Pilot.
IRCC is targeting at least 20,000 approvals in 2026 and the remaining 13,000 in 2027. It says it is on track: 3,600 workers received permanent residence between January and February — 18% of the 2026 target — before the program was formally announced.
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The initiative is part of Ottawa’s push to cut the temporary resident share to less than 5% of the total population by end of 2027, down from 6.8% in December 2025. The 33,000 target sits on top of IRCC’s existing annual PR admissions target — but with 1.49 million temporary workers in Canada as of February 2026, it covers roughly 1.3% of that population.
The Carney government inherited a system under significant strain. Under the Trudeau administration, temporary residents peaked at over 3 million by early 2025 — nearly 7% of the population — as immigration accounted for 98% of Canada’s total population growth in 2023.
Housing prices, infrastructure pressure, and rising unemployment among young people and recent immigrants fuelled a public backlash. Trudeau himself acknowledged in October 2024 that the government “didn’t get the balance quite right,” announcing a 21% cut to permanent resident targets and, for the first time, controlled caps on temporary residents.
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