Ottawa must table permanent resident targets for 2027 to 2029 within a month
Ottawa is weighing when to resume a "controlled increase" in Canada's population, just over a month before it is required by law to release an immigration levels plan covering the next three years.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told the New York Times in an interview on September 23 at the newspaper's Manhattan headquarters that the question is "when do we resume some controlled increase in the population."
He said the government wants to "make sure that we've got it under control."
Carney said in July the government had "taken back control" of the immigration system after rapid population growth under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, The Canadian Press reported.
Student arrivals are down 60 percent and temporary foreign workers down 50 percent, Carney told the New York Times, with asylum seekers down by one-third on a flow basis.
According to The Canadian Press, the government had planned to raise annual permanent resident admissions to 500,000, changed course with the 2024/25 immigration plan and began reducing intake.
It also began capping the number of temporary workers and students after saying major increases in those populations had contributed to strains on housing, the job market, health care and other services.
The most recent immigration levels plan called for 385,000 permanent resident admissions this year and 370,000 in both 2027 and 2028, The Canadian Press reported.
Two temporary measures will admit about 148,000 more permanent residents over the next two years that are not counted in the broader plan.
Statistics Canada estimates non-permanent residents accounted for 6.7 percent of the population as of July 1, against a government goal of reducing that share to five percent of the total population by the end of next year.
The CD Howe Institute's immigration targets council recommends admitting 380,000 permanent residents next year, 350,000 in 2028 and 340,000 in 2029.
The council also recommends treating the five percent temporary resident target as a ceiling, with the goal of reducing that population to three percent, and says Ottawa must do a better job of tracking work and study permit renewals and outflows of temporary residents.
It strongly recommends that all permanent resident admissions be tracked through a single target number.
Council members include several academics who study immigration policy, a Trudeau-era deputy minister and former Alberta premier Jason Kenney.
The Canadian Press reported that Mikal Skuterud, a University of Waterloo economics professor and council member, said the panel is still recommending historically high immigration rates at around 0.9 percent of the population.
Skuterud cautioned Carney against listening too closely to "the business lobby" and said immigration should not address a "tight labour market."
"Businesses have to compete for scarce labour. And how do they compete? Well, they've got to offer higher wages to compete, or more attractive jobs more generally," Skuterud told The Canadian Press.
Canada's GDP is shrinking due to limited population growth, Carney told the New York Times.
Statistics Canada estimated population growth of 0.5 percent year over year as of July 1.
Skuterud said the 6.7 percent figure suggests the government will have a hard time meeting its goal of shrinking the temporary resident population to five percent by the end of next year, according to The Canadian Press.
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said on social media that "Immigration levels need to go down, not up."
The Canadian Press has asked Immigration Minister Lena Diab's office whether she is considering permanent residency increases in the upcoming levels plan and has not received a response.
