Carney Says Canada Could Increase Immigration Rates Again

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada could resume a “controlled” increase in the population through immigration, after the federal government had capped immigration rates.

In an interview with The New York Times last week, Carney said there had previously been a “surge in demand” for immigrants to Canada post-COVID through international students and temporary foreign workers. But he said this put pressure on the country’s healthcare, education, and housing systems, which led to the government capping those numbers.

“Now the question starts to become: When do we resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada. So that will happen, and we just want to make sure that we’ve got it under control,” Carney said.

The prime minister said that his government had attempted to get Canada’s immigration system “under control,” and had successfully reduced the number of international students by 60 percent, the number of temporary foreign workers by 50 percent, and the number of asylum seekers by around 33 percent.

The government has set a goal of reducing the temporary resident population to 5 percent of the total population by the end of next year. The most recent immigration levels plan called for 385,000 permanent resident admissions in 2026, and 370,000 in both 2027 and 2028.

The government did introduce two temporary measures to welcome about 148,000 more permanent residents over the next two years that are not counted in the broader plan.

Canada’s population increased from 38 million in July 2020 to an estimated 41.9 million by September 2026, with Statistics Canada noting that the vast majority of the increase came from immigration. In November 2022, then-Immigration Minister Sean Fraser had said the updated targets would allow Canadian businesses to fill worker shortages and set the country on “a path that will contribute to our long-term success.”

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner reacted to the news of Carney signalling higher immigration rates by saying, “No. Immigration levels need to go down, not up.” Rempel Garner has argued that the Liberal government brought in more newcomers than the country could house or provide healthcare and jobs to, and that the immigration system needs to be reformed.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.