OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Lena Diab issued new ministerial instructions that include requiring provincial or territorial attestation letters for study permits with the goal of capping foreign student applications at just under 310,000 in the new year.

The new instructions were published Saturday in the Canada Gazette, the official newspaper of the federal government, and say these letters need to include a prospective student’s name, date of birth and address.

The federal government plans to admit 155,000 international students next year under the annual immigration levels plan.

Diab also issued instructions to pause the intake of permanent residency applications for startups and self-employed people as of Jan. 1 and that remains until further notice.

Permanent residency applications for migrant professional caregivers, both for home support and childcare, will not reopen as planned on March 31. The order says it will not be reopened until March 30, 2030, unless the minister issues new direction.

The government says both pauses are necessary due to the volume of applications that still need to be processed.

The Migrant Rights Network issued a media release Monday calling on the government to reverse the pause to the caregiver permanent residency applications, saying it is the one stream for these kinds of workers.

The network says the last application window that opened on March 31, 2025 was closed within 4.5 hours and left 40,000 migrant care workers without a permanent residency option.

Listed processing times for caregivers vary from 21 to 33 months depending on the type of work, amount of experience and when their application was made.

There are more the 44,000 economic immigration applications in the queue for the startup visa stream.

Government data shows that applications submitted in January 2020 were expected to be completed in about a month, while applications submitted in the last year have a listed wait time of more than 10 years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 12, 2025.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press