World Education Services (WES) is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to helping international students, immigrants, and refugees achieve their educational and career goals in the United States and Canada. The weekly roundup includes research, stories, and events of interest to the Canadian immigration and settlement community. This content has been created by WES and is reproduced here with their permission, in partnership.
Canada extends pilot to support skilled refugees and employers (GoC)
The Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), Canada’s first complementary pathway for refugee labour mobility has been extended until December 31, 2025. Founded in 2018, the EMPP has served to match highly skilled displaced people with job vacancies in Canada, aiming to recognize both the human and social capital of refugees. Since its inception, Canada has welcomed a number of qualified individuals to support labour market needs in critical sectors including healthcare (30 percent), construction and food service. From 2019 to 2025, 970 people have been admitted. The annual intake cap for 2025 is set for 950 applications and seeks to enable additional workers and employers in essential sectors to continue to benefit from the pilot’s pathway to permanent residence.
Canada sets record for number of refugee claims (Toronto Star)
In 2024, Canada ranked fourth in the world for receiving asylum claims and is the second-largest resettlement country globally, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Around the world, an estimated 123.2 million people have been forced to leave their homes for various reasons including persecution, civil unrest, and human rights abuses. This is an increase from the 117.3 million recorded in 2023 and 108.4 in 2022. In 2024, Canada received a record 174,000 new refugee claims of the 3.1 million claims reported worldwide. Canada followed behind Germany (229,800), Egypt (433,900), and the United States (729,100). Canada also led in resettlement efforts, welcoming 49,300 refugees in 2024, and granted permanent residence to 27,400 refugees. The UN agency notes that the main drivers of displacement in recent years have been large-scale conflicts such as those in Sudan, Myanmar, and Ukraine. Contrastingly, elevated trends for displacement are expected to fall this year by one percent, as the growth rate slowed during the second half of 2024. The report calls for continued efforts in funding resettlement programming and support for infrastructure and social services development.
Fast vs. Slow: How Different Immigration Rates Can Impact Canada’s Economic Challenges and Regional Disparities (CD. Howe Institute)
A new report from the C.D. Howe Institute explores how immigration rates and regionalization policies affect population growth, regional balance, and Canada’s economic strategy. While immigration supports overall population growth – exponential expansion has revealed disparities in fast-growth and slow-growth regions. Larger, metropolitan areas expand rapidly while smaller communities often experience slower growth, limited infrastructural capacity and stagnation. Given Canada’s multi-pronged demographic challenges including and aging population and declining fertility rates, the benefits of higher immigration levels, researchers note, have been felt unevenly across the country. For high growth scenarios focused on large urban centres, concerns such as housing availability, affordability, and service capacity, rise to the forefront. To ensure sustainable growth and economic resilience across Canada, experts point to managing immigration levels in line with supporting regional development efforts.
Western University is proposing a partnership with Navitas in an effort to boost international student enrollment. As caps continue to impact revenue sources for higher education institutions, stakeholders are working to develop innovate ways to off-set financial impacts. Western’s partnership with Navitas, an Australian company, is looking to create a new privately run international college under Western’s name to offer a separate first-year entry pathway for some international students. “Western International College” (WIC) would recruit first-year international undergraduate and graduate students who would not typically qualify for direct admissions. WIC students would be expected to pay the same tuition as other international students and would be eligible to continue their studies if they meet all specified requirements of their first year. The proposed partnership has garnered skepticism due its privatization partnership, that some critics claim could impact public funding and undermine academic integrity.
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