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 introduced new challenges to our immigration system. Despite this disruption, we continued to welcome newcomers, landing more than 405,000 new permanent residents last year, exceeding our ambitious immigration levels target of 401,000.
My mandate letter commitments will allow us to continue to make real progress in these and other areas, 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.
My mandate letter also includes a commitment to implement a national strategy to support Francophone immigration across the country.
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.
Lastly, we will continue to implement the Francophone Immigration Strategy, which aims to support the vitality of Francophone minority communities across the country, and to reach a 4.4% target of French-speaking immigrants by 2023.
