November 18, 2025
RED FM News Desk
At a time when Canada is defending itself in a trade war with the U.S., a new report casts doubt on whether the nation’s immigration policy is able to retain the global talent required to bolster the economy on the home front.
According to a new report commissioned by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), highly educated and skilled immigrants are the most likely to leave Canada within five years of landing.
In its report released Tuesday titled “The Leaky Bucket 2025,” the ICC found that one-in-five immigrants leave Canada within 25 years of being accepted as permanent residents. This trend, referred to as “onward migration,” peaks at the five-year mark.
More alarming are the statistics showing that individuals with a doctorate are more than twice as likely to move away from Canada than people with a bachelor’s degree. That number grows to three times as likely when immigrants face job prospects that do not provide income growth.
In the 2025 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, the federal government chose to stabilize permanent resident admissions at 380,000 for the next three years, until 2028. The Institute projects that if the current trend of onward migrations persists, 20,241 immigrants will leave Canada by 2031.
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