A hiring blitz at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is barely making a dent in the department’s inventory of applications for permanent and temporary residency and citizenship.

At the end of the first week of June this year, there was a backlog of roughly 2.39 million applications at the IRCC. 

Fast forward four months and the IRCC’s backlog of applications is even higher at more than 2.5 million.

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That’s despite a hiring blitz announced about a month ago to bring on 1,250 more employees at the immigration department this fall and several measures announced in late April to help Canadian employers deal with the challenge of finding employees amid a severe labour shortage.

In late April, the IRCC announced:

• the resumption of Express Entry draws starting in July of this year;
• a temporary policy to give recent international graduates with expiring temporary status the opportunity to stay in Canada longer;
• the extension of a temporary public policy to allow foreign nationals in Canada as visitors to apply for an employer-specific work permit without having to leave Canada until the end of February 2023, and;
• policy changes benefiting those who applied for permanent residence via the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident (TR-to-PR) pathway last year.

Despite those changes, the backlog at the IRCC initially only grew over the summer as the immigration department was flooded with a record level of applications. 

By mid-July, the IRCC was staring down more than 2.6 million applications. 

Since then, the department has made some headway. Applications at the IRCC have since fallen by almost 4.3 per cent, or 112,432 applications.

In an emailed response to Immigration.ca, IRCC spokesperson Isabelle Dubois said the department’s performance in August and September “largely matched projections.”

The latest drop in the IRCC’s inventory of applications comes as immigration to Canada shows every sign of setting a new record again this year.

Based on the trend in the first eight months of this year, Canada is poised to welcome 463,860 new permanent residents by the end of this year, or almost 7.5 per cent more than the 431,645 targets in the Immigration Levels Plan for 2022.

Applications Are Being Processed Faster But There Record Numbers Of Them

Under pressure to deal with the backlog, the IRCC made a distinction between the number of applications it has in its inventories and applications which have taken longer to process than allowed under service standards. 

In her response to Immigration.ca, Dubois pointed out that although the total number of applications in the department’s inventory was nudging back up again in the first few weeks of October, applications are being processed faster. 

The number of applications the IRCC defines as backlog is going down.

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“The percentage of applications in backlog has remained consistent for permanent residence at 53 per cent, and decreased for temporary residence from 59 to 54 per cent and citizenship grants from 35 to 31 per cent,” wrote Dubois.

“This means that we are well on our way to meeting our goals to reduce overall backlogs and process 80 per cent of new applications within service standards – and we will continue to do what it takes to get there.”

The latest IRCC data reveals citizenship applications in the department’s inventory fell by more than 9.1 per cent, from 387,368 in mid-July to 351,964 by Oct. 3.

Permanent residency applications also fell from mid-July through to Oct. 3, decreasing almost 1.7 per cent from 514,116 to 505,562 applications, a drop of 8,554.

Applications For Privately-Sponsored Refugees Fell By 6.9%

A big chunk of the drop in permanent residency applications, 57.3 per cent of that reduction in applications in that category, is due to a decrease of 4,905 privately-sponsored refugee applications, a drop of 6.9 per cent from the 71,076 in mid-July. 

Under the economic programs, the IRCC had 9,484 fewer applications in its inventory at the start of October than it did in mid-July as the number of those applications fell almost 4.5 per cent from 211,903 to 202,419.

The biggest change in that category of programs during that period was the reduction of 7,100 applications under the Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program, a cut of 39.1 per cent from the 18,127 applications in July to 11,027 in early October. 

During that same period, the number of applications in the IRCC inventory for the Atlantic Immigration Pilot (AIP) was cut almost exactly in half as the federal government transitioned away from the pilot towards the permanent version of that program.

There was a drop of 7,269 in the number of Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) applications through Express Entry but that was more than offset by a  spike of 8,809 PNP applications received outside the Express Entry system. 

Applications in the IRCC inventory for the Quebec Skilled Worker program dropped by 3,626 during that period and applications under the one-time TR-to-PR pathway were down by a comparable amount, 3,966. 

Temporary residence applications in the IRCC’s inventory fell by just under four percent, or 68,474 applications, from July through to October. 

That result is largely attributable to the reduction of 62,748 study permit applications and another drop of 4,109 study permit extension applications during that period, for a total of 66,857 student-related applications, as the school year got underway.

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Permanent Residence Applications as of Oct. 3, 2022

Immigration Category	Program	Total
Economic	Agri-Food Pilot Program	830
	Atlantic Immigration Pilot Programs	1,194
	Atlantic Immigration Program	320
	Canadian Experience Class (EE)	7,420
	Canadian Experience Class (No EE)	115
	Caring for Children	42
	Federal Investor	4
	Federal Self Employed	3,831
	Federal Skilled Workers (C-50)	134
	Federal Skilled Workers (EE)	11,027
	Federal Skilled Workers (Pre C-50)	23
	High Medical Needs	4
	Home Child Care Pilot	19,842
	Home Support Worker Pilot	9,034
	Interim Pathway Measure	536
	Live-in Caregiver	754
	Provincial/Territorial Nominees (EE)	20,656
	Provincial/Territorial Nominees (No EE)	44,408
	Quebec Entrepreneur	249
	Quebec Investor	10,484
	Quebec Self Employed	78
	Quebec Skilled Workers	20,944
	Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot	1,167
	Skilled Trades (EE)	293
	Skilled Trades (No EE)	5
	Start-up Business	1,599
	TR to PR	47,426
Economic – Total		202,419
Family Class	Children & Other Family Class	8,761
	FCH-Family relations – H&C	2,575
	Parents and Grandparents	53,530
	Spouses & Partners	60,622
Family Class – Total		125,488
Humanitarian & Compassionate / Public Policy	HC & PH class-ADM Dependant Person Overseas	44
	Humanitarian & Compassionate Straight	10,868
	Humanitarian & Compassionate with Risk or  Discrimination	13,635
	Public Policy With RAP	38
	Public Policy Without RAP	4,665
Humanitarian & Compassionate / Public Policy – Total		29,250
Permit Holders Class – Total		21
Protected Persons	Blended Visa Office-Referred	195
	Dependants Abroad of Protected Persons	27,088
	Federal Government-assisted Refugees	30,659
	Privately Sponsored Refugees	66,171
	Protected Persons Landed In Canada	23,435
	Quebec Government-assisted Refugees	836
Protected Persons – Total		148,384
Overall – Total		505,562

Temporary Residence Applications as of Oct. 3, 2022

Application Type	Total
Study Permit	133,981
Study Permit Extension	31,373
Temporary Resident Visa	912,846
Visitor Record Extension	80,779
Work Permit	315,316
Work Permit Extension	177,354
Overall	1,651,649

Citizenship Applications as of Oct. 3, 2022

Application Type	Total
Grant	387,368