What’s Mark Carney’s immigration agenda?

What does Marc Carney, the next Prime Minister of Canada, intend to do with Canada’s immigration system?

On the one hand, Carney has emphasized the role that immigration plays in growing Canada’s economy.

On the other hand, he’s criticized recent immigration policy for admitting more newcomers than Canada can support, and has suggested implementing a cap on immigration.

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This article will cover Carney's public comments on Canadian immigration policy on the following topics:

A proposed “cap” on immigration;
The prioritization of temporary residents for PR;
Admissions numbers of temporary foreign workers;
The overreliance on international student tuition fees among Canadian postsecondary institutions;
Canada's Housing crisis; and
The role of immigration policy in Canada's national identity.

We'll also briefly discuss

Mark Carney’s background; and
What’s next for Mark Carney.

“Cap” on immigration

As part of his plan to address Canada’s housing crisis, Carney’s policy would “cap immigration until it can be returned to its sustainable pre-pandemic trend,” according to policy documents released in February 2025.

Carney positions this cap as a correction to overly lax immigration policy in recent years.

“We had much higher levels of foreign workers, students, and new Canadians coming in than we could absorb — than we had housing for, healthcare for, social services for, and than we have opportunities for,” he said on 27 November, 2024, at an event hosted by think tank Cardus in Ottawa.

Clearly, Carney supports a more restrained approach to immigration than we’ve seen in recent years.

In Oct of 2024, Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) released its latest Immigration Levels Plan, which included targets for admissions of new permanent residents (PRs) 20% lower than the previous year, and also included targets for net new admissions of temporary residents (TRs), for the first time ever.

Under its most recent immigration minister, Marc Miller, Canada’s immigration department took numerous steps to reduce temporary resident volumes, including the cap on study permit applications, as well as increased restrictions on eligibility for family open work permits and post-graduation work permits (PGWPs).

Given that Carney has not provided specific numbers, details on which TR and PR programs would be affected, and on how the cap(s) would be implemented on each program, it’s unclear exactly what this "cap" might entail, or to what degree it would constitute a departure from recent immigration policy under Miller.

Prioritization of temporary residents for PR

During the Cardus event, Carney spoke about a period of “getting back on track” by focusing on “absorbing the 4-plus million people who have come here in the last few years” before prioritizing growth.

The idea of transitioning temporary residents to permanent residents by prioritizing TRs in Canda for PR aligns with the federal government’s most recent immigration policy.

In the most recent Immigration Levels Plan, IRCC created an “In-Canada Focus” category for permanent resident admissions, and targeted 82,980 PR admissions for this category in 2025 — about 36% of the year’s economic immigration target.

The federal government also said they were targeting negative population growth for Canada in 2025. Carney’s statements suggest his policy may align with Miller’s recent immigration direction.

Influx of temporary foreign workers

Carney also spoke about reining in the number temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada.

“I don’t want to oversimplify, but there were failures of execution: we let too many people in as TFWs,” he stated.

He acknowledged Covid-19 played a role, as businesses pushed for more TFWs during the pandemic to meet labour shortages, and the government approved and lost track of this in the process.

A TFW is anyone who is in Canada on a work permit. This includes those under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program as well as the International Mobility Program (IMP).

The Immigration Levels Plan 2025-27 already included targets for temporary resident admissions.

As per the plan, net new work permits issued under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) are set to remain flat at 82,000 per year for 2025, 2026, and 2027.

Meanwhile, net new work permits allocated to the International Mobility Program (IMP) are 285,750 for 2025, and 128,700 for 2026.

The government expects Canada’s total population of temporary residents to decline by about 445,000 in 2025 and by another 445,000 in 2026, with much of this decline coming from

Temporary residents being admitted as PRs; and
Temporary residents having their status expire.

Over-reliance on international student tuition fees

While Carney has not explicitly said anything about limiting international students or student caps, he voiced his concern over whether Canada was truly supporting higher education institutions.

“Transfers from provincial coffers have been frozen, leaving universities to rely completely on international students for growth,” he stated.

Since the government first announced caps on the number of international students in 2024, postsecondary institutions across the board have been hit hard fiscally. Many have been running multi-million dollar budget deficits, in addition to implementing layoffs, hiring freezes, and cuts to programs and services to address revenue shortfalls.

For example, towards the end of last year, Seneca college shuttered a campus, Sheridan college halted enrolment in at least 40 programs, and the University of Waterloo implemented a full hiring freeze.

Carney advocated for increased funding for educational institutions as a way to reduce their dependence on international students.

Housing crisis

Based on his above statements, Carney may look into housing stock while considering future immigration policies.

His campaign also promises to “supercharge Canada’s housing plan.”

This plan for supercharging the housing plan includes growing the construction sector workforce by investing in the skilled trade workforce, and expanding training and apprenticeship programs for skilled trades.

This seems to be in-line with the current federal government initiatives to support the construction industry by creating new pathways for construction workers.

It is unclear whether Carney would support a direct funding of public housing by the federal government. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the Canadian federal government funded the creation of low-cost public housing through various programs, but the federal government ceased the majority of its funding of public housing in the 1990s.

Immigration policy and Canada's national identity

Carney has emphasized the importance of immigration for Canada's economy as well as for its national identity.

When asked about whether Canada can afford a pro-immigration policy, Carney said, “The short answer is yes we can – and arguably, we can’t afford not to.”

He also emphasized Canada’s history of welcoming immigrants, mentioning that a large portion of people in the country are second generation immigrants, if not direct immigrants or somewhere in between.

“We are very much a country that welcomes immigration and integrates immigrants very quickly to become Canadians and develop,” he added.

Carney’s background

Carney comes from humble beginnings. Both his parents were teachers, and he was born in the Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton, Alberta.

He went on to study economics in Harvard, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree, then obtained master's and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Oxford.

Carney began his career at Goldman Sachs, working there for over a decade before starting at the Bank of Canada, where he served as Governor from 2008 to 2013, helping steer Canada’s economy through the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. He was subsequently tapped as Governor of the Bank of England, holding the position from 2013 to 2020.

From 2020 onward, he served as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance while also working with Brookfield Asset Management as chair and head of transition investing.

Carney has also served as informal advisor to Justin Trudeau, on topics such as the government’s pandemic recovery plan.

Carney announced his bid for the leadership of the federal Liberal party of Canada on January 16 – his first foray into politics.

What’s next for Mark Carney?

While Carney is expected to be sworn in within the next few days, it remains unclear how long his stint as Prime Minister will last.

Canada’s next federal election must take place by October 20, 2025, but could take place even sooner.

Once parliament is back in session on March 25, political commentators expect that opposition parties may trigger an early election by passing a no-confidence vote on the current Liberal minority government.

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