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Trends · Chapter 3 of 3

Landing, and after.

Permanent residence is not the end of the story. This final chapter shows where Express Entry sits within all permanent residence in Canada, where new PRs actually settle, and when the door to citizenship tends to open. Real people, real places, honest numbers.

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Act 5 · Landing

Who crosses the finish line.

If you're deep in the wait, it can feel like Express Entry is the whole world. It isn't. It is one important channel inside a much larger picture of how people become permanent residents, and seeing the bigger frame can be steadying. Below is where EE sits within all permanent residence, and the occupations that land most often. One honesty note we take seriously: Express Entry (C) sits inside economic PR, which sits inside all PR (F). These are nested groups, not separate buckets, so the figures never add up to a single total, and we never pretend they do.

Express Entry within all PR landings, by year

Number of people admitted as PRs each year · Express Entry: 1,046,265 · all PR: 3,996,335 (all years; EE is a subset of all PR, so these don't sum)

Express Entry PR

20159,665
201633,150
201765,230
201892,090
2019109,415
202063,680
2021155,715
2022116,190
2023120,650
2024134,790
2025114,730
2026 (YTD)30,960

All PR

2015270,830
2016295,480
2017285,625
2018320,050
2019340,180
2020183,640
2021405,205
2022436,680
2023470,740
2024482,570
2025392,735
2026 (YTD)112,600
Official · IRCCIRCC Express Entry PR admissions (C) within all PR admissions (F)

Top occupations of people landing as PRs

Number of new PRs admitted in each occupation (2026), counts rounded to the nearest 5

Other occupations62,335
3413 - Nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates1,460
6311 - Food service supervisors1,295
4214 - Early childhood educators and assistants1,020
4212 - Social and community service workers990
6322 - Cooks940
Official · IRCCIRCC permanent-resident admissions, by occupation
Every bar here is a count of people who actually landed, rounded to the nearest five, not a rate or a projection. EE landings fell 73% year-over-year, a reminder that admission volumes shift with policy and targets rather than with any one applicant. The steadier truth underneath is that roughly 6 in 10 economic PRs arrive through Express Entry. EE nests inside the wider economic-PR class, which in turn nests inside all PR, so when you compare the two panels you're looking at a part sitting within a whole. These are separate official datasets shown side by side to give you perspective, not a single pipeline we're slicing up, and we won't invent a conversion between them to make the story look tidier than it is.
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Act 6 · After

Where you'll put down roots.

It's easy to picture PR as the finish line, but for most people it's really the start of the settled part. The journey continues into a city, a neighbourhood, a community that slowly starts to feel like home, and for many, citizenship a few years on. This last act steps back from deadlines and cut-offs to show where people who make this journey actually put down roots, and roughly when the door to citizenship tends to open.

Where new PRs settle

Number of new permanent residents, by the destination city they named (counts rounded to the nearest 5)

Toronto: 1,190,895 permanent residentsMontréal: 446,640 permanent residentsVancouver: 436,965 permanent residentsCalgary: 241,925 permanent residentsEdmonton: 193,470 permanent residentsOttawa - Gatineau (Ontario part): 160,105 permanent residentsWinnipeg: 158,335 permanent residentsHalifax: 71,325 permanent residentsKitchener - Cambridge - Waterloo: 69,055 permanent residentsSaskatoon: 68,655 permanent residentsRegina: 65,475 permanent residentsHamilton: 55,275 permanent residentsLondon: 50,725 permanent residentsWindsor: 37,685 permanent residentsMoncton: 32,570 permanent residentsVictoria: 28,090 permanent residentsSt. Catharines - Niagara: 22,240 permanent residentsSt. John's: 21,965 permanent residentsCharlottetown: 20,395 permanent residentsAbbotsford - Mission: 19,515 permanent residentsOshawa: 17,900 permanent residentsOttawa - Gatineau (Quebec part): 16,440 permanent residentsFredericton: 16,265 permanent residents
1,000,000300,00070,000Bubble area proportional to count · full ranking and exact figures below
Toronto1,190,895
Montréal446,640
Vancouver436,965
Calgary241,925
Edmonton193,470
Ottawa - Gatineau (Ontario part)160,105
Official · IRCCIRCC permanent-resident admissions, by intended destination city

The community already there

Immigrant population in each city today, drawn from the 2021 Census, so you can see the community you would be joining

Toronto~2.9 million
Montréal~1 million
Vancouver~1.1 million
Calgary~461,000
Edmonton~364,000

Source: Statistics Canada, Census of Population 2021. View table 98-10-0347-01 → · Statistics Canada Open Licence

Official · Statistics Canada · Census 2021Statistics Canada, Census of Population 2021, table 98-10-0347-01

New Canadian citizens

Number of citizenship grants per year

2023379,120
2024374,645
2025293,140
2026 (YTD)106,880
Official · IRCCIRCC new-citizen grants
These are counts of real people choosing real places to begin again, rounded to the nearest five. More new permanent residents settle in Toronto than anywhere else in Canada, though the map is wider than any single city and your own choice is entirely yours. According to the 2021 Census, the Toronto area is already home to ~2.9 million immigrants. You would not be starting from scratch. Looking further ahead, Canadian citizenship eligibility opens after 1,095 days of physical presence in the five years before you apply, roughly three years on the ground (though the exact day-count is yours to track carefully, since it's easy to miscount). Keep in mind that citizenship is a separate application with its own processing time, so it's a milestone to plan toward, not one that arrives automatically the moment you're eligible.
Sign in and claim your timeline to see exactly where you stand in this journey: your dates, your wait, your community.
Why we're building this

The whole picture, honestly. A gift back to the community.

This community built a spreadsheet that helped thousands feel less alone. Trends is the next step: taking that lived experience and every dataset Canada publishes, and turning it into the clearest, most useful map of the journey we can honestly draw, so the next person doesn't have to figure it out on their own.

  1. 01Official is labelled official; community is labelled community. You always know whose number you're reading.
  2. 02We connect datasets as narrative, never as fabricated joins. No invented conversion rates, no false precision.
  3. 03Rounded and suppressed data stays rounded. Estimates say "estimate." A projection is never a promise.
  4. 04The personal layer is yours. "You are here" reflects your own timeline. Only you see it.
Deep dive: Invited candidates →Deep dive: Permanent residents →

Source: IRCC — IRCC: Express Entry permanent residents. Data through Apr 2026 · published 2026-06-16 View on open.canada.ca → · Open Government Licence – Canada

Source: IRCC — IRCC: permanent-resident admissions (all programs). Data through Apr 2026 · published 2026-06-16 View on open.canada.ca → · Open Government Licence – Canada

Source: IRCC — IRCC: operational processing (COPRs issued, new-citizen grants). View on open.canada.ca → · Open Government Licence – Canada

Source: Statistics Canada, Census of Population 2021 — immigrant status by census metropolitan area (table 98-10-0347-01). View on www150.statcan.gc.ca → · Statistics Canada Open Licence