Mr. Speaker, I rise to table three petitions. The first petition is signed by 20,634 people who are calling on the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to increase the annual permanent residence admissions target for 2027 onward from the current 380,000 to approximately 415,000, representing 1% of Canada's population, and, with this increase, to allocate sufficient annual quota to the humanitarian pathways for Hong Kong, Sudanese and Ukrainian PR applicants and to clear the backlog of the 62,000 pending applications within three years.
The petitioners also say that Canada has a long-standing humanitarian tradition of assisting people affected by crises through special immigration pathways, yet applicants in these humanitarian pathways face processing wait times of over 10 years, with only 4,000 admissions allocated for 2027-28. These are applicants who are already living, working and studying in Canada.
Granting PR now would reduce the temporary residence population and would not create significant new demand for housing, education or health care. I urge the minister to heed the call.