COW – Funding Cuts and Reduction of Staff and Impacts – May 28, 2026

Impacts on Services and Processing

• We align staffing with the funding and priorities in the Immigration Levels Plan, including available permanent resident (PR) levels space.
• In many PR programs, there are more applicants than available spots under the Immigration Levels Plan.
• Long wait times are not caused by the number of officers that we have. They reflect a combination of factors: annual PR levels space, the volume of applications received, the complexity of individual cases, and the timeliness of applicant responses to information requests.
• Adding staff will not reduce wait times because applications can only be processed when space becomes available.

Prioritization

• We have introduced cross-training and are moving staff to where demand is highest so we can meet the needs of our clients and keep services operating as efficiently as possible.
• We continue to leverage the use of technology in order for files to be looked at by the right person at the right time.

Office of Auditor General Report and 2,000 Student Compliance Investigations

• The 2,000 investigations figure was an initial planning target during the early stages of the program.
• We have reviewed all 153,000 cases, and students were compliant in 78% of cases. We are following up on the remaining 22% to see if enforcement is needed.