The Parliamentary Budget Office projects Ottawa will spend nearly $1 billion this year on health services for asylum claimants, refugees and other covered under the interim federal health care program.

In a new report issued Thursday, the PBO said spending on the program would hit $989 million in 2025-26 before rising to $1.52 billion by 2029-30. 

The report attributed the rising cost to asylum claims, longer eligibility periods from processing backlogs, and increase in per-beneficiary costs. 

IFHP provides limited and temporary coverage for urgent and essential health care services, like prescription drug benefits, to government-sponsored refugees and asylum seekers. The coverage ends when claimants have a change of status and are eligible for provincial or territorial health insurance, or when they leave the country. 

Between 2020-21 and 2024-25, the report detailed that the cost of the program saw a 325 per cent increase, from $211 million to $896 million. 

While the report doesn’t factor in the government’s co-payment policy, Immigration Refugee and and Citizenship of Canada (IRCC) estimated the model would generate approximately $126.8 million in savings in 2026-27 and about $232 million after. 

The report was requested by the Standing Health Committee in November, during debates over immigration’s impact on health care.

Earlier this year, the federal government announced that sponsored refugees and asylum seekers will be required to co-pay for their health-care coverage starting in May. It was first presented as a fiscal measure under the 2025 budget. 

The co-payment includes $4 for each eligible prescription medication and 30 per cent of the cost of other eligible supplemental health products and services, such as dental care, vision care, counselling and assistive devices. 

The PBO also projects the temporary health care coverage costs will increase by 11.2 per cent in the next five years, reflecting a slower growth seen in the previous five-year period. 

Conservative MPs Dan Mazier and Michelle Rempel Garner said in a statement that rising asylum claimant volumes and processing delays are driving up the costs. 

The party said they have proposed solutions to address PBO’s report, including limiting federal benefits for asylum claimants to emergency healthcare only. 

“The Lierals are still bringing too many people, too fast, with no consideration for the costs it imposes on Canadians,” Mazier and Rempel Garner wrote.

“People who are supposed to leave aren’t.”