Federal Budget Falls Short on Canada’s Commitment to Immigrants and Refugees

Toronto / November 6, 2025

This federal budget falls short on Canada’s commitment to immigrants and refugees. It misses the opportunity to maximize the economic potential and promise of immigration at a time when collaboration with immigrant and refugee communities is crucial for economic growth. Some budget measures are a positive response to long-standing advocacy by civil society groups. The Budget also contains proposals that will have a disproportionate negative impact on women, racialized individuals, and those with precarious immigration status.

We welcome these proposals in the Budget:

• Permanent Residence for Protected Persons: The budget proposes to grant permanent residence to 115,000 “eligible protected persons” over the next two years. This is a welcome response to advocacy led by the Canadian Council for Refugees, bringing attention to protected persons in limbo. We encourage the government to include overseas family members of protected persons in this measure. (Details)
• Regularization: The budget proposes a one-time initiative to give permanent residence to a small number (33,000) of work permit holders over two years. While this is miniscule in the context of many thousands of residents without immigrant status, it is certainly welcome. If passed, we hope this proposal will include workers in jobs classified as low-skill and who are excluded from any permanent residence stream, and expanded in the future to include other workers.
• Credentials Recognition: The budget proposes to establish a Foreign Credential Recognition Action Fund targeted to health and construction sectors. This could help to reduce applicants costs in the typically very expensive credentials recognition process and reduce delays. The fund must be expanded to include the skilled trades and other sectors. Failing to do so ignores a significant portion of our internationally trained talent and limits our collective economic potential. For better impact, the government should also include measures to connect people with jobs, and remove systemic barriers related to hiring and retention.
• French-speaking Immigrants: We welcome the proposal to increase French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec, from 9% in 2026 to 10.5% by 2028. Its success depends on parallel investments in settlement infrastructure, and services delivered by the immigrant and refugee-serving sector. We are concerned that planned cuts to the federal public service will reduce access to French-language support, creating a critical contradiction. Without adequate resources, this policy risks exacerbating settlement challenges and failing the very immigrants it aims to attract.
• Gender Equity: In a previously announced measure, the Budget includes investment in gender equity, particularly through funding for initiatives funded through the Department of Women and Gender Equity. These are important and much-needed investments and can help to support survivors of gender-based and intimate partner violence, and invest in equitable opportunities for women and gender-diverse people.

The following proposals are troubling:

• Limits on Settlement Services: The introduction of eligibility limits for economic migrants will block access to vital settlement programs, disproportionately harming women who often delay use due to family responsibilities. This directly contradicts the government's own Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) framework and downloads the responsibility onto already strained provincial services. The tracking and management of these limits will create an additional administrative burden on agencies.
• Refugee Health At a Price: The new co-pay for Interim Federal Health Program has the potential to cause great harm. By creating a financial hurdle for healthcare, the government is effectively putting a price tag on the safety of refugees, particularly women and gender-diverse people fleeing violence who are more likely to live in deep poverty and have fewer financial resources.

Other areas of concern:

• Settlement Funding: The budget is silent on any reversal or mitigation of previously announced cuts to settlement funding. This appears to be based on the assumption that relatively lower immigration admissions would result in reduced need for settlement services. Yet a significant number of immigrants and refugees continue to need support to navigate the settlement process, including overcoming systemic barriers that can delay settlement and reduce their capacity to fulfil their economic and social potential. This can delay the settlement and economic integration of immigrants and refugees, particularly those who are most vulnerable. It will also negatively impact the stability of the immigrant and refugee-serving sector and job security and wages of sector workers.
• Delayed Economic Integration: The budget missed the opportunity to reverse cuts to higher-level language training. These classes are essential for helping skilled newcomers find employment commensurate with their abilities, fueling the very economic growth this budget is intended to support.
• Racial equity: The budget is silent on addressing racism and building racial equity. This is deeply troubling in light of the rise of racism in public discourse and racially motivated attacks, as well as deepening racial inequities in income, labour market access, healthcare and housing. The budget is also silent on investment in Canada’s anti-racism strategy and the federal anti-racism secretariat. There is no mention of implementing the National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act, which became law in 2024.
• Refugee levels and family reunification: The 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan proposes to increase the economic share of immigrants from 59% to 64%. That will result in reductions in other categories including family class (sponsorship of family members including spouses, children, parents and grandparents) and in refugees and humanitarian levels. It will also increase the long delays in refugee sponsorship and family reunification that exist currently.
• Interim Housing Assistance Program: The budget will not invest in this program, meant to provide housing support for refugee claimants and justifying it by claiming these numbers will be reduced in the future. Combined with other measures such as expanding the Safe Third Country Agreement and introduction of the anti-refugee and anti-migrant Bills C-12 and C-2, this signals the government’s plans to shut out refugee claimants, in violation of our international humanitarian obligations.
• Housing: The budget's promised investments in housing are undermined by a critical failure to address the rental affordability crisis and protect vulnerable tenants. Although it includes a previously announced commitment to affordable and non-market housing (such as public, cooperative, and supportive housing), it is silent on increasing affordable rental supply, protecting the existing affordable stock, strengthening tenant rights, and aiding those in core housing need. This oversight will disproportionately harm recent immigrants and refugees, who face the highest barriers. Data shows 56.9% of recent immigrants are renters (versus 24% of Canadian-born/longer-term residents), and one in five lived in poverty in 2022 (compared to 6% of the Canadian-born population). Their heightened vulnerability to core housing need means the budget's gaps will have a significant detrimental impact on them, as well as all low-income residents.
• Scapegoating immigrants and temporary residents: The budget wrongly blames immigrants and refugees for the housing crisis as well as scapegoating them as a burden on healthcare and schools. Cutting their numbers based on this flawed premise is a harmful political maneuver that validates and fuels xenophobia. The Canadian government must be better than this.
• Status for all: The budget missed the opportunity to introduce an immigration status regularization program for those already in Canada, reducing their vulnerability and recognizing their role in our communities and the economy.
• Increased funding for Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA): We are deeply troubled by the significant increase in immigration and refugee enforcement spending, while cutting back on investment in settlement and integration.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): The budget's significant investments in AI infrastructure must intentionally include community-based partners, like those in the immigrant-serving sector and other sectors that serve equity-seeking groups. Excluding our sectors risks widening the digital divide and creating new barriers that will delay or halt equitable labour market transitions for those most in need. Ultimately that will carry a significant economic cost for all Canadians.

The budget includes stark contradictions. While proposing to "take control" of an immigration system it has always managed, the government doubles down on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program—a system recently condemned by a UN Special Rapporteur as a "breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery." Workers should be granted permanent status on arrival, as better protection against exploitation and abuse.

The budget completely fails to address the need for a broad and inclusive immigration status regularization program, leaving thousands in our communities vulnerable and undocumented due to systemic flaws and exploitation.

While the budget includes welcome measures, including those that respond to long-standing civil society advocacy, it misses the opportunity to invest equitably in immigrant, refugee and racialized communities and build prosperity for all residents.