Canada’s permanent residency (PR) system increasingly operates through “two-step” migration: many future permanent residents first arrive as temporary workers or students and only later transition to permanent status. In 2024, Canada admitted 483,640 permanent residents, while the non-permanent resident population reached 2,959,825 on April 1, 2025. At the same time, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has continued to adjust pathway design through changing admissions targets, category-based selection in Express Entry, and the after-effects of pandemic-era temporary measures. For applicants, the route to long-term status can therefore be difficult to interpret and difficult to plan around.