Mark Carney says Canada's immigration policy suffered ‘failures of execution’

Country took in more newcomers than economy could handle; now it's time to get 'back on track'

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney says that Canada has experienced “failures of execution” when it comes to immigration policy in recent years, taking in more people than the economy was able to handle.

“It’s not even with hindsight, it’s in real time, you can see that we had much higher levels of foreign workers, students and new Canadians coming in than we could absorb,” Carney said on Wednesday, during an event hosted by Cardus, a Christian non-partisan think-tank.

The federal government recently announced changes to its immigration targets for the next three years, reducing the number of newcomers by 21 per cent to 395,000 in 2025 and 380,000 in 2026. The target for 2024 was about 500,000.

The federal government’s shift in immigration policy followed polling that suggested Canadians’ views on immigration were shifting. In October, a poll by the Environics Institute in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University, reported a majority of Canadians wanted less immigration for the first time in 25 years.

From 2023 to 2024, Statistics Canada reported Canada’s population grew at a record pace of 3.2 per cent, driven mainly by temporary immigration.

Carney says this next period is about getting immigration “back on track” by absorbing the nearly four million newcomers that have recently entered the country.

“To my way of thinking that’s quite different than saying we don’t want immigration, that we don’t value new Canadians, we don’t grow as a society,” he said.

Looking ahead, Carney says immigration will remain an important contributor to Canada’s economic future.

“Now I can make a very economic wonky, but hugely important economic point around our demographics and it’s the fact that we need both productivity and a growing labour force, and that growing labour force is going to largely come through new young Canadians,” he said.

• Email: jgowling@postmedia.com

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