Backgrounder - 2005 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration

The 2005 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration announces the government’s immigration plan for 2006; provides information on immigration activities for the calendar year 2004 (for both permanent and temporary residents); gives a mid-year update on the permanent residents admitted in 2005; and summarizes key activities undertaken in collaboration with the provinces and territories. Under section 94 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) must table the report on or before November 1 of each year.

Highlights of the Report

This year’s report provides information on the following:

• Canada’s immigration plan for 2006. The report gives the overall immigration range for the coming calendar year and provides the target ranges for permanent residents to be admitted in each immigration class in 2006. Overall, the government is committed to admitting between 225,000 and 255,000 permanent residents in 2006 and plans to have a 56%/44% balance between the economic and non-economic classes.
• CIC’s partnerships with provincial and territorial governments. This overview includes a list of the federal/provincial-territorial agreements currently in force and summarizes the key joint initiatives. In 2004, 6,248 permanent residents were admitted under the Provincial Nominee Program to fill regional or local needs.
• The 235,824 new permanent residents admitted to Canada in 2004. This section includes breakdowns by immigrant class, province of destination, country of origin and linguistic profile.
  • 133,746 newcomers admitted under the economic class in 2004 (57% of the total). This includes skilled workers, business immigrants, provincial nominees and live-in caregivers.
  • 62,246 newcomers admitted under the family class in 2004 (26% of the total).
  • 32,685 refugees and other protected persons admitted in 2004 (14% of the total).
  • 6,945 people granted permanent resident status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds in 2004 (3% of the total).
• The 13,598 temporary resident permits issued in 2004 to persons seeking to enter Canada but found to be inadmissible.
• Key information on the temporary residents admitted in 2004. In 2004, CIC admitted 90,688 foreign workers, granted 56,536 new study permits to international students, and issued 684,341 temporary visitor visas.
• A mid-year report for 2005 on the number of permanent residents admitted from January to June, by immigrant class. There were 130,906 newcomers admitted in the first half of the year, based on a planned target range of 220,000 to 245,000 new permanent residents.
• An overview of gender-based analysis activities. A gender-based analysis (GBA) is an analytical framework that assesses the different impacts of proposed or existing policies, programs, legislation and regulations on women and men. This section describes CIC’s policy framework for GBA, reports on key GBA activities undertaken by CIC and provides gender breakdowns for the key immigration statistics provided in the report.

For more information, including historical landing patterns, see the publication entitled Facts and Figures on Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s website at www.cic.gc.ca.