Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has unveiled a budget plan that would bring 2.3 million additional migrants into the country over the next three years, even as 1.5 million Canadians currently lack jobs and the economy recently shed 114,000 jobs over three months.
Carney, a former international banker who leads the Liberal Party, defended the plan on social media, writing “We are masters of our destiny.” He has described the scale of immigration as a “sustainable level” and said “it’s the right thing to do,” arguing he has “taken back control” of immigration policy since Justin Trudeau’s departure.
The 2.3 million figure includes new migrants, temporary migrants, and permanent residency conversions for people already in Canada on temporary status. They would join a country of 42 million people that already includes roughly 8.3 million subsidized migrants. Among the total, 650,000 people are scheduled to receive permanent residency over the three-year period, and the plan includes room for at least 15,000 additional pensioners.
Conservative Opposition
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called the plan “a disaster” on November 6. “Our economy is collapsing in real time,” he said. “Canadian jobs should go to Canadians first.”
Poilievre argued the policy serves corporate interests at workers’ expense: “Why are they doing it? Of course you know why they’re doing it. There are corporate power brokers want to use the labor to drive down wages and charge more rent, and they’ll profit by continuing to destroy the working class. And we want exactly the opposite: less immigration, [and] controlled [so we] bring in only the people who can contribute, and only in the numbers for which there is healthcare jobs and housing available.”
He also pointed to conditions at food banks, describing a visit to one in Brampton: “They have no protein. They have no rice. They have no cooking oil. Their fridge is broken, and they don’t have the $20,000 to repair it. They had a mother who came in to their food bank, and they had no food for her, and she said, ‘My fridge is empty, my bank account is empty, my stomach is empty, I need food.’ And they said, ‘We’d love to give you some. We don’t have any.’ And she literally got on her knees and begged because she did not know what she was going to do when she got home.” He added: “That is the state of Canada today. After 11 years of Liberal government, these are the people that we’re fighting for.”
Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservative Party’s shadow minister for immigration, called the federal approach “a dumpster fire” on November 5. “What’s just astounding to me about this announcement is the lack of empathy, both for Canadians who are struggling to find housing… whose wages have been depressed…. [and] for newcomers coming to Canada,” she said, adding that immigration policy should be “viewed from the lens of people who are struggling with their pocketbook issues, struggling with that entry-level job,” rather than from the perspective of “corporate power brokers and the lobbyists.” She said newcomers are also affected, noting “a lot of those people who are using food banks right now are newcomers.”
Scale and Context
Carney’s plan would add roughly one migrant for every 20 Canadian residents, or one for every 14 native-born Canadians, and would deliver about two immigrants for every Canadian birth over the next three years. By comparison, the United States takes in roughly one million legalized migrants annually against a native-born population of about 300 million, a rate of about one migrant per 3.5 U.S. births.
Canadian homelessness has doubled, and 67,000 migrants left Canada in 2025, including some who crossed into the United States. Meanwhile, Canada’s stock market has roughly doubled over the past three years, and the banking sector has posted strong gains — up 1.8% in the week of November 6 alone, with a 46% gain over the prior 12 months, according to SimplyWall.St, which projected continued earnings growth of 6.5% annually.
India has become a major source of migration to Canada, with at least two million Indian migrants now in the country sending home roughly $8 billion annually in remittances. India’s government has also proposed moving as many as 60 million Indians to Canada as part of an expansion plan first floated in 2011 by the Century Initiative, a group of investors who proposed growing Canada’s population to 100 million. One of that initiative’s founders, Mark Wiseman, now serves as Carney’s ambassador to the United States.
Political Backdrop
Carney’s Liberal Party holds a parliamentary majority that gives it control over the national budget process and immigration policy. That majority is built in part on support from naturalized migrant voters, government employees, corporate donors, media backing, and older homeowners. The coalition helped Carney take over the party after Trudeau’s resignation in January 2025 and defeat Poilievre in the April 2025 election.
Since that defeat, the Conservative Party has increasingly framed immigration policy as benefiting corporations and older investors rather than younger workers. “Our youth are desperate: They can’t find homes, they can’t find jobs,” Poilievre said, arguing Carney “doesn’t care about the people – he cares about the corporate profits.”
International Comparisons
Similar immigration-driven growth strategies have been pursued by governments in Spain, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany and France, with those countries also seeing rising housing costs and wage stagnation alongside bank profitability.
In the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration oversaw the arrival of an estimated 13 million additional migrants over four years, a period that coincided with rising housing costs, inflation and stagnant wages. President Donald Trump’s administration has pursued a different approach, aiming to boost productivity by reducing immigration levels.
Before becoming Canada’s prime minister, Carney led the Bank of England during the years following the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union, a move he had opposed, arguing it would push up wages. After Brexit took effect, the UK’s Conservative government oversaw a large wave of migration — roughly 4.2 million people, sometimes called the “Boriswave” — which has been associated with flat wages, reduced productivity, and higher housing costs in Britain. UK bank stock values have nearly tripled since that wave began.
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