The federal government will soon begin inviting thousands of Canadians to apply to sponsor parents and grandparents for permanent residency — just as the country faces record-high housing prices, collapsing emergency room wait times, and increasing pressure on the social safety net.

According to a CTV News report, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will issue 35,700 invitations this year under the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP), aiming to approve 20,500 complete applications.

The move is part of Ottawa’s ongoing expansion of immigration streams — despite growing concerns that the Liberals have lost control of the system entirely.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner didn’t mince words in her comments to Rebel News:

“The Liberals need to explain how the levels they've set for the Parents and Grandparents Program will impact Canada's already severely strained housing supply and health-care system,” she said.

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The Calgary-Nose Hill MP continued:

The Liberals broke the consensus for immigration in Canada because they allowed hundreds of thousands of people to enter Canada on temporary student visas and as temporary foreign workers without the housing, health care and jobs to support them.

That drove up the cost of housing, increased health-care wait times, and exacerbated unemployment. There will potentially be millions of people in Canada on expired visas soon. A decade of utter Liberal mismanagement of the immigration system impacts everyone in Canada, but also families seeking to immigrate while playing by the rules.

Rempel Garner said the government must match immigration levels to the country’s capacity in terms of “housing, health care and jobs” — something she says is “clearly not happening.”

Quiet Announcements, Big Consequences

Despite the significant implications for public services, the PGP expansion was rolled out with little fanfare.

No cabinet press conference. No public accounting of how this added pressure will be absorbed. No cost estimate. Just another press release dropped into the void while Canadians sit in ERs for 18 hours or get outbid on 900 sq ft condos.

The announcement comes as Canada is expected to welcome over 500,000 permanent residents in 2025, alongside hundreds of thousands more temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers — many of whom rely on the same housing and health-care systems as everyone else.

In cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, waitlists for primary care doctors now stretch for months, and provincial health-care systems are openly admitting they can’t keep up.

Meanwhile, housing starts are lagging behind immigration growth by tens of thousands of units per year.

“Reuniting Families” or Overloading the System?

Unlike economic-class immigrants, sponsored parents and grandparents aren’t required to show job offers or financial self-sufficiency.

Sponsors must sign a 20-year financial undertaking, but critics argue enforcement is weak — leaving taxpayers on the hook when things go sideways.

For a government that claims to care about affordability, its immigration decisions are telling a very different story.