The Canadian response to Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s large-scale invasion has been praised as one of the country’s most generous humanitarian responses in recent history. Through the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program, known as CUAET, nearly 300,000 Ukrainians came to Canada with temporary permission to live, work and study.
For many, that protection offered the chance to rebuild their lives. They found jobs, enrolled their children in school, learned English and became part of their communities. Yet as the initial emergency response gave way, many faced a different challenge: how to build a stable life while living under a temporary program.
Participants in the program used it to secure housing, find work, learn English, care for their families and navigate Canada’s immigration system while also trying to determine whether remaining in Canada would be possible. As civil society organization representatives told me, the initial priorities centred on securing housing and employment, but then shifted towards longer-term questions of integration and building a future in Canada.
I’m conducting ongoing research on this issue, including conducting interviews with displaced Ukrainians in Canada and the civil society organizations supporting them. Along with with policy analysis and existing research, these interviews have made it clear to me that the greatest challenge for Ukrainians hasn’t been reaching safety in Canada, but building a future afterwards.
Not permanent
CUAET was introduced in March 2022 as an emergency response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike Canada’s refugee resettlement programs, it operated through the temporary immigration system.
Ukrainians and eligible family members could obtain temporary status, an open work permit, access to primary and secondary education and limited settlement services. However, unlike some other refugees, CUAET visa holders were not eligible for the full range of settlement supports and did not have a dedicated pathway to permanent residence.
The government previously said applicants had until March 31, 2026 to apply for new work or study permits, or to renew their work permits for up to three years, but then announced a one-year extension.
In many ways, the program has succeeded. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were able to leave the war behind and begin rebuilding their lives in Canada. But CUAET was never intended to be a permanent immigration program. Those who hoped to stay had to navigate existing permanent residence streams while simultaneously establishing themselves in a new country.
For many of the people I interviewed, finding a job was only the beginning. Rather than addressing one challenge at a time, they often had to balance employment, housing, language learning, caregiving and immigration processes simultaneously.
As one civil society organization representative put it, newcomers faced “employment needs, language needs, [and] a lot of quick decisions needed to be made under a lot of stress.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Daly
Changing needs, limited resources
As time passed, participants also described a shift in the kinds of support they needed. Emergency assistance helped many people during their first months in Canada. Later, however, many were trying to navigate permanent residence applications and credential recognition while emergency funding and programs were winding down.
Several civil society organizations described trying to meet these changing needs with increasingly limited resources. As one worker explained, many employment programs required English-language proficiency that newly arrived Ukrainians did not yet have. By the time participants met those requirements, eligibility for some supports had already ended.
Civil society organizations played a central role in participants’ settlement, despite many not being funded or formally mandated to provide settlement services. They helped people find housing, access services, enrol children in school, connect with language classes and navigate everyday life in a new country.
As participants’ needs evolved, organizations adapted their support by assisting with immigration paper work, explaining changing government policies, translating official information into Ukrainian and identifying possible pathways to permanent residence. Several participants suggested that, without this assistance, navigating Canada’s immigration system would have been significantly more difficult.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Help to build lives
Canada’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrated that it can respond quickly when large numbers of people need protection.
My preliminary research suggests that the next challenge begins after people arrive. Temporary protection offers safety, but rebuilding a life over several years requires something different: stable housing, accessible information, sustained settlement support, a pathway to permanent residence and the ability to navigate an increasingly complex immigration system amid rising living costs.
Large-scale displacement is likely to remain a defining humanitarian challenge in the years ahead. If temporary protection becomes an increasingly common response, governments will need to think beyond arrival. Getting people to safety is essential, but helping them build a life while displacement continues is just as important.
