Although Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) increased hiring significantly, the processing of applications continues to be slow. Canada has received an unprecedented number of temporary and permanent resident applications in only the first eight months of 2022. Such a situation is nearly as many applications as Canada received in all of 2019, increasing the operational capacity of IRCC by 45 percent from pre-pandemic levels. The country’s immigration system has been overloaded for the past two years. The number of permanent and temporary residence applications is expected to be even higher this year, surpassing last year’s 3.2 million applications.
