For the first time the federal government will be tracking which foreign residents actually leave Canada when their permit expires.Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab told a committee of MPs on Monday that Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada will begin tracking the entry and exit of temporary residents in Canada, according to a report by The Globe and Mail.According to The Globe, the government will begin conducting a pilot program to track temporary residents and international students to make sure they are actually leaving Canada once their permits expire. Up until now there had been no program of its kind to track temporary residents."There’s also a pilot that is in process, which will work toward looking at the entry and exit departures, not just of these students but of any temporary residents,” Diab said after being questioned by Conservative MPs.The program was revealed at a Commons immigration committee, which was questioning the immigration minister's failure to investigate cases of immigration fraud and study permit non-compliance..This comes as economists have been warning that Canada has been underreporting the amount of temporary residents and international students who have stayed in the country long after their permits have run out.According to a report by the Auditor General, in 2023 and 2024 more than 153,000 cases of students thought to be breaching their study permits occurred; of these, only 4,000 were actually investigated by the IRCC.Diab said that actually the cases identified in the report had been investigated, and 78% were still attending school, and the remaining students were presumed to have either left the country or were staying longer than their permit allowed.Beginning from the start of May, IRCC, in cooperation with Canada Border Services, will begin recording whether or not temporary residents have left and begin collecting entry and exit data.The result of this data gathering will be better organized and searchable data about the current status of temporary residents in Canada.
