While the feds have spun job and program-spending cuts to Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada as “efficiencies,” a look at the numbers shows deep cuts to services and an offloading of costs to cities, a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reveals.

In Budget Cuts Are About to Wreck Canada’s Immigration System,CCPA senior economist DavidMacdonald finds the cuts are a crisis in the making.

“We’ve been sounding the alarm about these cuts for a year, and the impacts are now starting to hit with all their serious consequences,” said Rubina Boucher, National President, Canada Employment and Immigration Union. “The government is slashing programs that people need to survive instead of investing in necessary services for this country to thrive.”

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A strong Canada depends on a strong public service. Cuts like this don’t create efficiency – they create a system that fails exactly when it is needed most.

“When it Matters Most,” CEIU’s national campaign, shows the impacts of cuts on people in their daily lives, and we need your participation:

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Key research findings:

• The Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) will be eliminated. It refunds municipal governments that pay for emergency housing for asylum seekers experiencing homelessness. Four municipalities—Toronto, Peel region (Toronto suburbs), Ottawa, and Montreal—will have to pick up the $160 million a year tab.
  
  
• While economic immigrant levels are scheduled to increase by five per cent over the next three years, programs like language training and credential recognition to integrate new immigrants into the job market will be slashed by 30 per cent.
  
  
• 40 per cent of the entire CER “savings” is actually just a cut to preventive health care and prescription drug coverage for asylum seekers and refugees. This will result in needless suffering and higher costs down the road that IRCC is on the hook for anyway, CCPA reports.
  
  
• A surge in staffing got immigration application backlogs under control in 2023 and 2024. However, the elimination of 17 per cent of the staff, have let backlogs spike again. By December 2025, no major immigration application stream had its backlog under control. Cases are more likely to end up in federal court as IRCC is unable to process applications in a timely manner.

“Health care funding cuts will force asylum seekers to avoid necessary care while major application backlogs due to staff layoffs will let cases languish. Many new Canadians have the skills we need and while we’re bringing them in, we’re slashing the programs that will get them jobs and let them use those skills. And let’s not forget that a major part of this ‘savings’ is just to force the cities to pay for it,” said Macdonald.

Read the full report.

Watch webinar about CCPA report

Macdonald presented his findings to some 300 CEIU members during a national webinar last week.

View the webinar here:

CEIU will use these research findings to advocate for a robust public service and immigration system.