Canada’s immigration system is bursting at the seams, and the Carney government appears to have lost track of who’s actually in the country.
According to Order Paper Question Q-326, answered on November 3, 2025, by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), more than 1,070 temporary residents whose visas had already expired filed asylum claims between January 1 and July 31, 2025.
During that same period, an astonishing 2,551,055 temporary resident visas expired — covering visitors, students, and foreign workers. That’s over 2.5 million people whose legal status lapsed in just seven months.
The Liberal government says there were about 7 million temporary resident visas currently valid as of August 1, 2025, along with another 11 million electronic travel authorizations (eTAs), for a combined total of nearly 18 million valid temporary entries, more people than Canada’s entire population west of Ontario.
But when it comes to how many expired visa holders actually left Canada, the government punts: that question was “redirected” to the Canada Border Services Agency, which hasn’t provided an answer.
In plain language: the government doesn’t know how many temporary residents overstayed, how many left, or how many are now living here under asylum claims.
Even more troubling, the department admitted the data isn’t centrally tracked and said a full accounting “would require a manual collection of information” that was “not feasible within the time allotted.”
Canada is now issuing millions of temporary permits a year — and with record numbers of expired visas, untracked departures, and expired permit holders claiming asylum, the country’s immigration controls appear to be collapsing under their own weight.
Hellbound and Down 