Conservative critic says government must hit lower immigration target in next levels plan

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner says Canada’s immigration targets need to go “way down” after Prime Minister Mark Carney recently floated the possibility of increasing immigration levels.

“The Liberals keep allowing too many people in too fast for housing, health care and jobs to keep up,” Rempel Garner said during a news conference Wednesday.

The Conservative immigration critic said her party is calling on the government to drop its immigration targets even further than it had previously set.

The government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau had begun cutting immigration levels after rapidly increasing targets during the post-pandemic labour shortage.

The most recent immigration targets were laid out in last year’s budget, which includes hard caps on certain immigration streams — including a 43 per cent reduction in the number of temporary residents Canada will admit this year.

WATCH | Minister says immigration increases Canadian prosperity following Trump comments:

Minister says immigration increases Canadian prosperity following Trump comments

Asked about U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media post claiming Canada’s immigration polices have led to ‘big unemployment,’ Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said the government has since 2024 reduced immigration levels to ‘stabilize’ supports for all Canadians.

The levels plan, which is typically updated once a year, also set a target of 380,000 new permanent residents per year from 2026 until 2028.

Rempel Garner didn’t offer an immigration target when asked what number would be acceptable to her party. Instead she said targets need to be in line with the country’s ability to provide services, housing and jobs.

“We would restore order and fairness. We would remove people with no legal reason to be in the country and we would get back to the principles of integrating people into the Canadian economy,” she said.

Carney recently suggested that his government is starting to consider when it could increase immigration targets again. During an interview with the New York Times, the prime minister said his government is “getting the system under control.”

“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,” the prime minister said, according to the interview transcript.

“To have the prime minister go to a foreign news outlet and announce a potential immigration increase on the horizon without discussing housing, health care and jobs — it’s just irresponsible,” Rempel Garner said Wednesday.

Immigration numbers decreasing: StatCan

In his interview with the New York Times, Carney did mention the “pressure on housing” in the context of Canada’s immigration levels. He also pointed out that Canada’s population growth has been slowing.

The most recent estimates from Statistics Canada suggest that the population only grew by half a percentage point when comparing July 2025 to July 2026.

The statistics agency said part of the slowing growth is due to the number of new permanent and temporary residents that Canada has admitted decreased in that same time period. For temporary residents alone, StatsCan estimates there was a decrease of roughly 154,000 from July last year to July this year — the largest decrease in temporary residents since the early 1970s, the agency said.

U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at Canadian immigration policies last week, saying the country is “destroying itself” by allowing “millions” of people into the country without proper security checks. Those comments sparked push back from federal ministers that said the president’s views are ill-informed and grossly inaccurate.

Carney was asked in the New York Times interview if Trump influenced Canada’s immigration program, which the prime minister denied.