Immigration plays a vital role in growing our economy and addressing labour shortages, enhancing the diversity of Canada’s population, and upholding Canada’s reputation as a global leader of humanitarian causes.
Over the past two years, the pandemic has introduced new challenges to our immigration system. Border closures, travel restrictions and public health measures had significant impacts on our programs and services. Despite this disruption, we continued to welcome newcomers, landing more than 405 000 new permanent residents, exceeding our ambitious immigration levels target of 401,000 by the end of 2021.
My mandate letter commitments will allow us to make real progress and address these challenges, including through maintaining ambitious immigration levels targets, working to reduce application processing times and strengthening family reunification, and facilitating the arrival of vulnerable people from Afghanistan.
We have already begun moving forward on some of these high priority commitments. For example, we are proposing to invest $85M this year to help reduce processing times in key areas affected by the pandemic, and $1.3B over the next six years to support our enhanced commitment to resettling vulnerable Afghans in Canada.
As we move ahead towards a post-pandemic recovery, I look forward to working with our partners to implement this ambitious agenda.
Supplementary messages
These mandate letter commitments prioritize our ongoing work to strengthen Canada’s immigration and refugee system, including bringing in more newcomers to all regions of Canada who will support Canada’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
My mandate letter also includes commitments related to the humanitarian, social and service related aspects of our immigration system, such as our enhanced commitment to facilitate the safe passage and resettlement of vulnerable people from Afghanistan, the expansion of the new immigration stream for human rights defenders, and our commitment to strengthen family reunification through the introduction of electronic applications.
