RBC Says Canada’s Immigration System Needs a Reset

Jackie Pichette’s RBC Thought Leadership note says Canada’s immigration strategy has lost its edge. The country added three million people between 2022 and 2024, a decade of inflows in three years, then pulled back so hard the population fell for the first time in modern history. Temporary residents went from under 3% of the population before the pandemic to 7.6% in 2024. Rents in Toronto and Vancouver jumped with them. Per-capita GDP fell two years in a row.

Express Entry is no longer picking the highest earners. Category-based draws since 2022 let lower scorers leapfrog the queue. Canadian Experience Class applicants now need more than 100 extra points, on average, than other categories. The federal points system used to take almost 80% of economic immigrants; it is closer to 30%. “It doesn’t make that much sense to recruit for those specific professions at a national level because you have no direction over where those people end up in Canada,” Pichette said.

The student file swung with it. More than 25 rule changes hit international students from 2024 to 2026 and cost the post-secondary sector more than 20,000 jobs. More than 25,000 Canadians retire every month. Without immigration, RBC says the population halves by the turn of the century. 71% of Canadians now say there is too much immigration. The bank’s fix is a steady population-growth target around 1%, restore the points system, and park occupation categories with the provinces.

The surge strained housing and services. The snap-back now starves the talent pipeline Ottawa wants for energy, mining, and transport. Volume without skill is how you get more people and less output per head. The reset is for purchasing power, not the headcount.