OTTAWA”•Canada will start welcoming a minimum of 300,000 immigrants annually in 2017 in order to ease economic pressures linked to an aging population, Immigration Minister John McCallum announced Monday.
The figure, which is in line with this year’s unusually high intake number, however, falls far short of expectations after a report last week proposed a 50 percent increase to 450,000 immigrants annually.
That amount would have set Canada on a path to tripling its population by the century’s end.
“In 2016, we jumped to 300,000 largely as a consequence of our special actions on Syrian refugees,” McCallum said.
“What I am announcing today is that for 2017 we will make that 300,000 permanent and it will become the foundation for future growth in immigration,” he said, adding that this rate is “40,000 above the historic norm.”
More than half of the newcomers will be job seekers and investors admitted under an economic class.
The remainder of the newcomers will include spouses, children or parents of naturalized citizens, refugees, and others admitted on humanitarian or compassionate grounds.
This year’s large influx of immigrants was notably boosted by the urgent resettlement of some 30,000 Syrian refugees in desperate need at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, Canada will lift a visa requirement for Romanian and Bulgarian travelers at the end of next year and ease some restrictions before then, the government announced Monday.
The two EU nations had made visa-free travel a key condition for their support of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that was signed by Canada and the EU on Sunday.
After Romania and Bulgaria reached a deal with Ottawa a week ago on the visa waivers”•which will go into effect on December 1, 2017″•they lifted their respective threats to block the free trade accord.
“Lifting the visa requirements for Romania and Bulgaria will mean visa-free travel to Canada for citizens of all EU member states. We will all benefit from the increase in travel and trade that results,” Immigration Minister John McCallum said in a statement.
The visa restriction was meant to stop a feared wave of refugee claims by ethnic Roma, also known as gypsies, but created tensions between the EU and Canada.
In the lead-up to the full visa lifting, Ottawa said Romanian and Bulgarian citizens who have held a Canadian temporary resident visa in the past 10 years or who hold a valid US non-immigrant visa would be exempted from the visa requirement.