Canada's world-class educational institutions and diverse, welcoming society makes Canada a destination of choice for international students.
We are committed to attracting and keeping the world's best talent with the skills and experience needed to grow the economy.
Doctoral students play an important role in growing Canada's economy and driving innovation through their research, including in areas like health care. They also tend to find jobs more easily and are more likely to work in the same field they studied.
In 2026, we introduced new measures to attract talent at the master's and PhD level. This includes measures to:
exempt certain master's and doctoral-level degree students from the provincial or territorial attestation letter requirement.
To attract leading international researchers to Canada as part of our Talent Attraction Strategy, ISED has launched the $1.7B Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative (Impact+), which will welcome over 1,000 researchers across all career stages to Canada.
We also launched new web resources to help prospective graduate students in making the decision to choose Canada.
