Maple News reports that Canada’s immigration department is increasing transparency around permanent resident (PR) admissions. A new government web page launched on July 21, 2026 clarifies that the annual levels-plan targets for 2026 and 2027 do not count PR admissions under two one-time initiatives.
The levels plan targets domestic-wide PR admissions at 380,000 per year for 2026–2027. However, those figures exclude PR admissions issued through the two one-time initiatives: up to 115,000 for protected persons and 33,000 for in-Canada workers over the same period.
When you include these one-time initiatives, the cumulative total of the government’s planned PR admissions for 2026–2027 rises to 908,000, averaging 454,000 per year.
The new page, titled “Understanding permanent residence numbers in Canada,” presents a bar chart breaking out monthly PR admissions from January to May 2026, showing levels-plan admissions separately from one-time-initiative admissions.
As of May 2026, Canada had admitted 128,000 PRs, with about 14.4% of those coming from one-time initiatives.
Looking at the one-time initiative targets as of May 2026, admissions under these programs accounted for 46% (9,100 of 20,000) of the in-Canada workers target and 20% (9,300 of 46,000) of the in-Canada protected persons target for the year.
This release comes alongside an update to the government’s backlog page, which now breaks down PR applications slated for processing this year versus those waitlisted for future years to align with annual admissions targets. Separately, on July 15 the government paused new sponsorship of parents and grandparents for PR, reporting 50,900 Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) applications in inventory, with PGP PR admissions set at 15,000 per year for 2026–2028 under the levels plan.