The Current - 1.4 million work permits expire in 2026. What’s next?

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

We speak with 25-year-old Abhishek Parmar, who has his work permit expiring in March, and is working hard to ensure he can stay in Canada. We also speak with Mireille Paquet, director of the Concordia University Institute for Research on Migration and Society, and economist Mikal Skuterud on Canada’s changing policies and views on immigration.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. For years, millions of people have come to Canada as temporary residents to study or work with the expectation that down the line, they'd be allowed to stay here permanently. Now, the clock is ticking on their time in this country. Facing huge backlogs and a change in how Canadians talk about immigration, the federal government has, over the past few months, begun a reset of Canada's immigration policy, and that includes. lowering the number of people Canada allows to stay here. 1.4 million work permits are set to expire this year, more than half of them by June.

Some people have been here for years, working meaningful jobs, buying homes, building families, but according to immigration refugees and citizenship Canada, only 380,000 of them will qualify for permanent residency this year. The rest either have to apply for an extension to their work permits or leave the country. One of those people facing an expiring work permit is Abyshech Parmar. The 25-year-old came to Canada six years ago to study mechanical engineering and has worked for an automotive and fabrication company in Windsor, Ontario. His work permit expires this March. Abyshek, good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm well. Your work permit, as I say, expires in less than three months. How are you feeling?

I'm a bit nervous, but I think my permanent residency will go through if I just keep on working. There's certain things I'm working on, like learning French. I also gave my English test recently to improve scores. So I'm positive, but like little nervous. A little nervous. Tell me a little bit about how you ended up in this situation. As I say, you came here to Canada to study and applied through an Ontario immigration pathway. What happened? Yeah. So after graduating in 2022, I got a job in Windsor itself in an automotive company which supported the Ontario nomination pathways program and I got the job.

I got the nomination as well and then I applied for my permanent residency as well but in September I got laid off due to their adverse business condition and due to that I lost my nomination because one of the condition was that I need to hold the same position until I get my permanent residency

which did not seem fair But, yeah, it was one of the underlying conditions. So being laid off closed that pathway off for you? Yes, completely. And so what happens now? As you said, you're studying French. You're taking the English tests as well. What happens now?

Yeah, so I'm currently learning French, and I'm also doing everything I can to improve my score. And right now, Ontario pathways are closed for me, but the federal government programs are open. So there's also a category called STEM, which supports the engineer like me. So I'm in that pool as well. So I'm also waiting for that draw to happen.

So there's some things in work and some things which I'm working on to get there. When you came here to study, was the expectation, did you believe that there was a path for you to become a permanent resident in Canada? Yeah, absolutely. When I came here, I think it was just a process, right? Because it was a lesser population, not too many immigrants in the country at that point of time. So it was just like you have to just study, you have to get a job and everything else will work out. This is just a procedure.

But now I have to keep my eye out for that as well, which is kind of annoying. Yeah, but that was definitely in the plan. And it was easier back then as compared to now. And so the clock is ticking. I mean, I hope for your sake that things work out. But if they don't, if you don't get to apply for permanent residency by March or you have that work permit extended, what are you going to do? Yeah, if I'm going to file an extension or request them to grant me an extension,

and if that also doesn't work out, I will go back to my home country and gain an experience and try coming back again as a permanent residence if I'm given the chance. But yeah, I'm not going to stay here undocumented or do something which is not legal or doesn't follow the law. Do you know people who have had to go home? Because their permit did not get extended or they didn't get invited to apply for PR? Yeah.

So basically, like, people like me who came at when we are so young, it was because we wanted to get integrated in the community, get used to the conditions early on. And, you know, to develop our life in that way. But, yeah, a couple of friends I know they have gone back to home and they are trying to gain that experience. Because even if you work outside the country, you can get like some more. points which can help you get permanent residency here. So yeah, they have gone back, unfortunately. But I hope they come back. I wish them the best.

You were very clear that you would not stay undocumented. Do you know people who have stayed here undocumented after their permit has expired? I'm aware of the stories, but I don't know someone first hand who has stayed undocumented here. But, yeah, I've heard from the news people and also on the internet that there's about like 200,000 people who are undocumented currently in Canada, which is a staggering number. Did you ever imagine that you would have to leave? I mean, again, you hope that you'll stay here, but did you ever imagine that you would have

to leave Canada? Did you see this as your home? No, I never felt that I would be leaving here because I have been in Windsor since like almost seven years now and it started to feel like home. And now since it's coming to an end, it's not a good feeling. I plan that it would be easier to get permanent residency, and it is, you know, again, as I said, it's just a procedure, but not in this way. Yeah, definitely. I wish you the best of luck, and I think we'll try to connect with you again in the next few months as that deadline gets closer.

In the meantime, Abyshech, thank you very much for this. Oh, 100%. Thank you. Looking forward to speak to you again. Abashik Parmar works in Windsor, Ontario, and his work permit that he is on to allow him to stay in Canada, expired. in March. Many of the people who could be told to leave Canada are working here in all sorts of different markets. And there is a concern that their loss could have impacts outside of the personal hope that they have of building a life in Canada. Mackell Scuderudorud is a professor of

economics at the University of Waterloo. Macaul, good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. Do we have a sense as to the impact that this many people, I mean, we're talking about 1.4 million work permits expiring this year, several hundred thousand by the springtime, What would that mean for the Canadian labor market? You know, there's an obvious tendency to think that this is a real problem for labor markets. You know, that we tend to air, I mean, the popular view of labor markets is that there's some fixed number of jobs out there that need to be done. And maybe many of them are essential jobs. And so if all these workers disappear, well, my God, the whole economy is going to fall apart.

But it's worth remembering that's precisely the kind of faulty thinking that got us into this mess. coming out of the pandemic, there was record numbers of job vacancies. And there was a notion that if these jobs don't get done, the whole economy is going to fall apart, which I argued at the time is just wrong way of thinking about how economies work. So, you know, I would really caution people against worrying that the consequences here are, I think there are significant consequences of this issue, but it's not on what's going to happen to labor market. Do we know what sectors could be hit hardest? I mean, where are those? who are currently in that limbo, if I can put it that way,

waiting for their application to be allowed and waiting for the permission to be here. What sectors are they working in? You know, they're working across the economy. For sure, there are non-permanent residents working in every industry in Canada, but they are highly concentrated in the low-wage service sector. And so for your listeners, you know, if you're getting a package from Amazon,

deliver to your house or you're getting a coffee at Tim Hortons, there's a very high chance that you're being served by a non-permanent resident. And so if those non-permanent residents in those sectors are told to leave, what happens to that work that they are doing? Well, that's exactly where economics gets interesting. You know, economies have all kinds of ways of adjusting. If you look across countries, the mix of jobs that are done, especially the percentage of jobs that are done by low-wage workers,

varies tremendously. And so there's all kinds of ways through technology, automation, just, you know, the number of Tim Horton's restaurants that are out there, there may not be as many. The prices of your coffee might be higher so that companies can afford to pay workers more, to attract workers from other parts of the economy. There's a reallocation of labor. You know, economies definitely do adjust, and there's lots of good that can come out of labor shortages. You just wonder how that squares with the experience of people who find themselves in that cohort. who themselves, I mean, we're not talking about numbers. We're talking about individuals here who

could be told that they have to leave the country. Absolutely. So, I mean, that I think is where from the beginning, when I saw the numbers of non-permanent residents being ramped up as we came out of the pandemic, that was my number one concern, that the numbers were increasing much faster than the ability of the permanent immigration system to absorb them all. And clearly they were coming under this expectation that we just heard from Abyshech that they would make that transition, that that was part of the agreement of coming. And so for those people, I think this is tragic. And I think there are serious consequences of having potentially a rising undocumented population. Is that your expectation that there will be a rising undocumented population and what people

have sometimes called the underground economy, for example? So there's no question, Matt, that this is happening. There's no question that that population is growing. How big that population is, nobody knows. If you hear numbers, they're just wild guesses. It's anybody's guess what it is. And how fast it's growing right now is anybody's guess, but it is growing. There's very, very little doubt in my mind that it's growing. What does that mean for the economy? If you have, you know, a cash economy, a growing economy that requires, you know, or relies on under the table work, for example. Oh, boy. I mean, this is exactly where, you know, when the government did their U-turn on these policies on

international student numbers and temporary foreign workers, there was a lot of talk about that the reason was the housing crisis and unemployment rates. You know, I really don't think that was, the pressure was within IRCC, the immigration department. It was a worry that inevitably what was going to happen is we were going to have a rising undocumented population. The consequences are, you know, something Canada has never dealt with because we haven't had a porous border. So something very new for Canada. Of course, in the U.S., they've dealt with this for years. And what comes to mind first, there's many consequences,

but what I worry about most, Matt, is that this population is vilified. And this is a very different situation than people coming through poorest borders. You know, this is people who came here legally with a very clear expectation of what the pathway to permanent status was going to be. This population becomes vilified. There's potentially a risk that there's calls for, increased deportations, and we're seeing how that's playing out south of the border. Just before I let you go, this is a population also that, I mean, as we heard, people expected

to be here have built lives, perhaps purchased homes, what have you, more than a million visas are set to expire. That's a lot of people. Do you expect a chaotic process as this unfolds? That's my worry. That's precisely my worry, is that we know deportations are happening all the time. Most Canadians don't realize that this is part of what. our CBSA, the Canada Border of Services Agency does, is deport people.

Those deportations, I think, almost undoubtedly, they're going to increase. The worry is you start to hear stories. I mean, I don't know if that, clearly, I don't know what that's going to happen. You know, in terms of the numbers, though, Matt, again, I really caution listeners when we hear these big numbers, you know, we just don't know. The reality is, of course, that Canada doesn't track exits. We don't know when people leave the country. I mean, this is a major gap in our data system.

And so when you hear these numbers, what we're using are just the permit expiry dates, but it's entirely possible some migrants are leaving before their permits expire. So it's entirely possible we're overestimating these numbers, perhaps by large margins. I just don't know. And reality is nobody knows what the numbers are. Mikhail, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Matt.

Mikhail Skudrud is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo. This ascent isn't forever. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. This message comes from Viking. committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment, on board, and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways.

Learn more at viking.com. As we mentioned, this comes at a time when, how we talk in this country about immigration is changing. Maraipa is director of Concordia University's Institute for Research on Migration and Society. She's in our Montreal studio. Good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. McIll ran through some of the background here, but just briefly, explain how we got here.

For a number of years during the Trudeau government, the number of people coming to Canada on temporary permits grew. What was the, as you understand it, the political thinking behind that? And I think it's important to remember that this growth in temporary residents predated the Trudeau government. So this is a trend that's been going on for about 20 years in which the number, these programs that either allowed students or workers to come in on a temporary basis grew. And part of it was simply that there was a recognition a long time ago that the permanent migration selection system was not necessarily. delivering just in-time workers or workers that were needed for the Canadian economy. So the idea was to have a two-track system in which you could have, you know, people selected on the basis of skills and human capital, and then people that were selected on the basis

of employer-expressed needs at a time being. And then over time, the number of temporary permit older grew, well, also the permanent resident category grew as well. And this accelerated, as was just discussed after the pandemic. But this trend was there for a long time as a way to try to balance those long-term goals for the Canadian economy and those short-term needs as well. Immigration refugees and Citizenship Canada told the CBC that having temporary status does not guarantee that a person will eventually be accepted as a permanent resident. But do you believe that people who came here on temporary status believed that they would eventually have a path to permanent residency? So it depends on who we're talking about. So the temporary migrants, they're a large category.

They include like several status from international students to temporary foreign workers who are on a work permit that is tied to an employer to people who are on an international mobility permit that is kind of open to any job in a Canadian economy. And so people on a closed permit, I think, received a message quite clearly that, you know, there were limited opportunities for permanent residency. The Canadian government, however, was very active and proactive and selling for international students and for mobility scheme, the idea that this was an opening for permanent residency. And this was not only communicated to applicants, but this was also reflected in our permanent selection. system because a lot of what's going on when you apply for permanent residency like Abyshev was talking about is that the experience you gain working in Canada counts in the way your point, your score is calculated, which means that in effect our permanent immigration system and the grid we used to select people was really giving an advantage to those that held a temporary

status in Canada so far as they had the other kind of skills that we were looking at. So I think the message was there. In some cases, it was very explicit and in other cases it was more implicit. What do you think will happen then? I mean, we're talking about perhaps more than a million people. What will happen when their permits expire? How will people determine, you know, who's going to stay and who's going to leave? The guess of everyone is as good as mine. So we know for sure that some people will leave. Some people will, as Abyshev was talking about file for extension. Now, how many of those will be granted by the government? that remains to be seen.

It's important to note that in the last immigration levels plan, the government also set aside about 33,000 permit slots for permanent residency for people that were transitioning from temporary status to permanent status. And then we can expect some people to try to apply to other programs stream, including maybe applying for asylum. And some people might remain in Canada irregularity. So we actually can't really predict this. And I think it's important to note, again, as Mikkel was just saying that we're facing a new situation that we've never experienced.

We are also, we're almost out of time here, but just very briefly, we're also in a context where the polling at the very least suggests that the Canadian consensus around immigration is shifting. What do you make of that? I mean, is that more nuanced than the polls might indicate? Oh, I think it's much more nuanced. So I think one of the thing that is important to take about, especially on the temporary resident issue, is that first stuff, I think, who is a temporary resident and who is a temporary migrant, why they're in Canada, what do they do? This is not really a clear construct in most Canadian minds. So what we're seeing expressed in the polls are overall macro feelings about immigration and about the state of the economy and about all of that. And I think another thing that we don't know yet is that we know that people will express maybe preference for lower immigration level at the aggregate level.

But when people actually start to see people being deported, people being detained and these stories are much more at the individual levels, then attitudes tend to change. And research has shown that people that tend to have pretty negative attitudes about immigration tend to not support individual level-based enforcement activities. So as we see more people being asked to leave the countries, there are chances that attitudes are going to change. This is such an interesting story. I mean, again, these are numbers, but there are people behind those numbers. And this has a larger context in terms of how we talk about immigration in this country. It's always good to speak with you. Marie, thank you very much.

Thank you. Maraa Paquette is director of the Concordia University Institute for Research on Migration and Society. She was in our Montreal studio. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.