Canada’s immigration debate is often reduced to one question: are the numbers too high or too low? RBC’s September 2026 report, A Smarter Immigration Strategy, argues that this is the wrong place to start. Canada still needs immigration because its population is aging, deaths are beginning to outpace births, and more than 25,000 Canadians are retiring every month. At the same time, Canada is competing with other countries for skilled working-age people. The challenge, according to RBC, is therefore not whether Canada needs immigration, but how many people it can absorb successfully, whom it selects, and whether those newcomers succeed after arrival.
RBC argues that Canada lost some of the stability that once distinguished its immigration system. Between 2022 and 2024, the country added roughly three million migrants, with much of the increase coming through temporary programs. Population growth ran ahead of housing, infrastructure and public services. The policy response then swung in the opposite direction, with tighter limits and repeated rule changes, particularly affecting international students. RBC describes both the rapid expansion and subsequent contraction as damaging to predictability.
Its proposed framework revolves around five questions. First, immigration levels could be tied to a relatively stable population-growth range, rather than large annual swings. Second, RBC argues for restoring a stronger role for Express Entry’s points system, which rewards factors such as education, language, age and work experience. Third, provinces could take greater responsibility for occupation-specific shortages, while Ottawa concentrates more heavily on candidates with strong overall economic prospects. Fourth, Canada could rebuild what RBC calls the two-step immigration model: people first arrive as students or temporary workers, establish Canadian credentials and experience, and some later transition to permanent residence. Finally, better and faster data would allow governments to measure whether newcomers are actually finding employment, earning higher incomes and remaining in the communities that selected them.
The fourth point is particularly important. RBC finds that previous Canadian experience has historically been valuable. Temporary-resident earnings are a strong predictor of later earnings as a permanent resident, while permanent residents who previously studied in Canada have tended to outperform otherwise similar newcomers. But RBC argues that this advantage weakened when temporary immigration expanded into lower-skilled employment and lower-quality educational programs.
The report therefore stops short of saying that temporary residence should automatically lead to permanent residence. Instead, it says some temporary programs can function as stepping-stones while others may not, and calls for clearer expectations about the distinction. That approach also broadly fits the federal government’s current direction: the 2026–2028 Levels Plan reduces new temporary-resident arrivals while maintaining 380,000 permanent-resident admissions annually and explicitly prioritizes some people already in Canada with needed skills and experience for transition to PR.
The Nova Scotia Test: Construction, Retention and the Path to Permanence
Nova Scotia provides an unusually useful test of RBC’s argument because the province simultaneously needs population growth, needs skilled workers and needs more housing. Construction sits directly at the intersection of all three.
BuildForce Canada projects significant hiring pressure in Nova Scotia construction through 2035. About 8,200 workers, equivalent to 21% of the province’s 2025 construction labour force, are expected to retire. Even after an estimated 7,200 new local entrants are added, BuildForce projects the province could still be short as many as 1,300 construction workers. Non-residential employment is projected to be 22% higher in 2035 than in 2025, driven by major healthcare, infrastructure and engineering projects.
Immigration is already part of Nova Scotia’s response. In February 2026, the province consolidated ten Nova Scotia Nominee Program streams into four, but specifically preserved construction as a priority under the Skilled Worker stream. Nova Scotia also operates an Express Entry stream and participates in the employer-driven Atlantic Immigration Program. (Live in NS) The construction focus is therefore not theoretical: the province is explicitly using immigration to help fill positions employers cannot fill domestically.
This makes the temporary-to-permanent question more complicated than it first appears.
Not guaranteeing permanent residence has advantages. A work permit can respond to an immediate shortage without automatically committing a future PR place. Governments retain the ability to adjust immigration levels as economic conditions change. They can also distinguish between workers who establish themselves successfully and temporary programs that were never designed as immigration pathways. This reduces the risk RBC identifies from treating temporary entry as a back door to permanent immigration regardless of skills, employment outcomes or changing labour demand.
But the opposite risk is substantial. Temporary status is part of Canada’s international recruitment offer. A skilled carpenter, electrician, construction supervisor or engineer deciding whether to relocate a family is not simply comparing today’s hourly wage. They may also compare whether Canada offers a credible long-term future. If the message becomes, “Come work for several years, help us build housing and infrastructure, but there is no predictable way to know whether you can stay,” Canada may become less attractive relative to destinations offering clearer settlement prospects. RBC itself stresses that prospective skilled immigrants need stability and predictability and that Canada is competing internationally for talent.
There is also a retention issue for Nova Scotia. Recruiting a skilled worker solves little if the worker leaves the province or Canada after becoming productive. Historical Statistics Canada data show that smaller provinces have generally had greater difficulty retaining immigrants than Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, although retention varies substantially by program and cohort. For construction employers, turnover carries additional costs: workers learn local codes, safety practices, suppliers, project systems and workplace relationships over time.
The policy trade-off is therefore more subtle than “temporary workers should get PR” versus “temporary means temporary.” An automatic transition can reduce government’s ability to control permanent immigration and respond to changing labour markets. An unpredictable transition can weaken Canada’s attractiveness, employee retention and the willingness of skilled workers to invest years of their lives here.
A third model sits between those extremes: temporary status with transparent, conditional pathways to permanence. Under such a structure, PR is not guaranteed merely because someone entered Canada, but workers can understand in advance what combination of occupation, Canadian experience, language, qualifications and employment performance could make them eligible. Elements of Canada’s current Express Entry, PNP and Atlantic programs already operate on versions of this principle. For a province such as Nova Scotia, where construction labour is needed not simply to grow the economy but also to build the housing required by population growth itself, the credibility of that pathway may be almost as important as the number of immigration spaces available.
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