In 2025, Canada admitted 393,770 permanent residents, according to preliminary IRCC monthly data, after Ottawa had lowered its 2025 target to 395,000 from the 483,640 admitted in 2024.

Ontario received 43.1 per cent of them, followed by Quebec at 15.3 per cent, Alberta at 13.1 per cent and British Columbia at 12.9 per cent. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the four Atlantic provinces together received about 15.3 per cent, but the distribution pattern between and within the provinces remained highly uneven.

These figures are usually read as provincial destination data. They should also be read as a warning: Canada is not one immigration market. It is better understood as three absorption systems, although the federal approach to immigration still treats them as one.

The underlying question is therefore not only how many people Canada admits, but where newcomers can be absorbed, supported and retained.

Ottawa has recognized that the previous pace of immigration created economic and social pressures. In response, the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan stabilizes permanent-resident admissions at 380,000 a year and gives greater weight to economic immigration. That is a necessary correction.

But it still leaves the most important question underdeveloped. It’s not simply how many people Canada admits, but where the first years of settlement can be supported.

Ottawa needs to take a different approach in each of the three areas to solve this problem.

The first absorption system is in the high-pressure corridor – the Greater Toronto Area, the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Greater Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau and the most crowded parts of the Calgary and Edmonton urban regions.

These places attract newcomers because they have strong employment networks, universities, communities, settlement services and previous high levels of immigrants, many with family ties to the newcomers. Housing, transit, schools and primary care here are not keeping pace with population growth, which is partially fueled by immigration.

The second system is in the underused growth region – much of Alberta and Saskatchewan outside their fastest-growing metropolitan cores, southern Manitoba and select mid-sized communities in Ontario and Quebec outside their most capacity-constrained urban areas.

These regions are not empty and they are not without similar economic and social pressure. But compared to the largest metropolitan corridors, they often have more room to........

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