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Carney hints at immigration turn: when to resume a 'controlled' population increase
In a New York Times interview, Carney said Canada's immigration system is back under control and the next question is when to resume 'some controlled increase in the population.' Ottawa must table its 2027-2029 levels plan by Nov. 1.
Why it matters
In an interview with the New York Times at the newspaper's Manhattan headquarters on Sept. 23, Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly floated for the first time that with the immigration system back under control, Ottawa is weighing when to resume "some controlled increase in the population." It is the first signal of a possible policy turn after years of cutting immigration levels. By law, the government must table a three-year immigration levels plan by Nov. 1, when the answer will become clear.
Full report
"Now the question starts to become, when do we resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada?" Carney told the New York Times. "So that will happen, and we just want to make sure that we've got it under control."
Carney said in July that the government had "taken back control" of the immigration system after rapid population growth under former prime minister Justin Trudeau. He told the Times that student arrivals are down 60 percent, temporary foreign workers down 50 percent, and asylum seekers down by about one-third on a flow basis.
The current levels plan calls for 385,000 permanent resident admissions this year and 370,000 in each of 2027 and 2028. Two temporary measures add about 148,000 more permanent residents over two years outside the headline plan. The government's goal is to reduce temporary residents to five per cent of the total population by the end of next year; Statistics Canada estimates non-permanent residents stood at 6.7 per cent as of July 1.
The C.D. Howe Institute's immigration targets council recommends continued reductions: 380,000 next year, 350,000 in 2028 and 340,000 in 2029, treating the five per cent temporary-resident target as a ceiling. Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said now is not the time to plan for more immigration: "Immigration levels need to go down, not up."
Sources: New York Times interview; The Canadian Press / CTV News reporting.
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