Immigration Mandate Letter

Dear Minister,

Canadians have given us a clear mandate: to grow our economy, strengthen our sovereignty and build a country that works for everyone. They are ready to build Canada. Now, we must deliver. 

Our path forward is ambitious – and it must be. Global instability, and the accelerating pace of technological changes are testing our resilience. But Canadians are not afraid of hard work, nor are they afraid to take risks. They believe in fairness, in unity, and in building an abundant future for all Canadians. This government must match their resolve with urgency, discipline, and ambition.

I expect all Ministers to remain focused on their core mandate. Every ministry has clear goals focused on delivering better services and driving economic growth, while doing both with the efficiency and excellence Canadians deserve. That means setting clear goals, with measurable outcomes, and being relentless in execution. 

I expect Ministers to fulfill their mandates at a pace this country has not seen in recent history. Canadians expect and deserve change. It is the responsibility of our entire government to remove any roadblocks quickly and ensure the smooth and fast implementation of our priorities.

I expect you to do this by recruiting top talent, adopting best practices from around the world, and leveraging modern tools wherever possible, including artificial intelligence. Above all we must be ruthlessly pragmatic. If our policies are not achieving the results that Canadians deserve then we must change direction to achieve our goals. Through this, we can build a more modern government that delivers better results more efficiently. 

As Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, you are responsible for transforming immigration into an engine of national prosperity and restoring public confidence in the system. Canada is, at its core, a land of immigrants. For generations immigrants' ideas, effort, and enterprise have powered our economy while deepening the rich mosaic of cultures and faiths that define Canada. Diverse communities have brought new businesses, innovations, cultures, religious plurality, and a strong, well-educated labour force to Canada.

But recent years have exposed strains on our systems: intake has exceeded housing and service capacity, visa backlogs have ballooned, and trust has eroded. The government has a responsibility to both existing residents of Canada and newcomers to ensure we have the capacity to welcome them. 

We must rebuild an immigration system that is fair, fast, and firmly rooted in evidence—one that earns Canadians’ confidence and convinces the world’s best talent to choose Canada. To achieve this will require a data-driven approach focused on the economic impact of every immigration class.

To fix this, we will modernize our immigration strategy. Your goal is to create the world’s most effective, merit‑based immigration system and position Canada as the destination of choice for the world’s best and brightest, delivering benefits that Canadians can see and feel. This will require you to actively attract the best possible talent to the highest value regions while returning immigration levels in alignment with our intake capacity.  

From the beginning of your leadership it is essential that you develop and set clear metrics guided by economic impact. So, within 90 days you must deliver a data‑driven report on the economic impact of every immigration class and proposed reforms—particularly to Express Entry— with a detailed roadmap that maps the policy levers needed to both maximise economic impact as measured by GDP per capita growth in particular by attracting individuals earning >$100 000 in high‑impact occupations and reforming the Start-up Visa program. 

At the same time you must restore trust in our immigration system and reduce the negative effects of recent policy by permanently returning temporary resident levels to less than 5% of the population by immediately to close loopholes that have driven a surge in unfounded asylum claims.

Your guiding targets are

• Raise the relative median income of very recent immigrants to 90% of Canadian-borns’, up from 80% today
• Permanent resident admissions capped at under 1% of Canada’s population annually
• Temporary residents including international students and foreign workers at under 5% of Canada’s population 

To do this, you will:

• Attract top talent to drive long-term growth
  
  • Revitalize the Global Skills Strategy to help high-growth businesses recruit highly skilled workers, including those from the U.S. and make GSS immigration 10% of total PRs
• Modernize services to reduce wait times and backlogs
  
  • Work with provinces and territories to streamline and speed up recognition of foreign credentials and international professional experience, reducing processing times to 6 months or less
  • Leverage digital service tools to reduce processing times such that 90% of applications are processed in 6 months or less 
  • Establish real-time information sharing between governments, agencies and organizations on claimant status, removals and settlement supports.
• Strengthen integrity of the system
  
  • Support legal aid for asylum seekers and refugees to resolve cases in 12 months or less
  • Enhance system to remove 100% of failed claimants within 30 days of final decision
  • Increase capacity for security screenings, identify and remove inadmissible individuals, tighten visa requirements and enhance enforcement against immigration fraud, reducing incidence of immigration-application fraud by 80%

We all know that our country could be so much more than it is. We have the land, the talent, the know-how, and the energy to be the most prosperous nation on earth. And our people have a spirit that could take them anywhere they want to go.

Now let’s build it.

Signed,

Prime Minister

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‍Note: Italicized figures are added by Build Canada