By: Rob Breakenridge
It’s been a political honeymoon like no other, as Mark Carney has continued to defy political gravity for more than a year and a half. Arguably, he’s much more popular now than he was when he saved the Liberals from political oblivion in April of last year.
Separatists might shrug, but Albertans can take heart in the clear correlation between Carney’s polling dominance and his very public embrace of energy development. Mind you, those same polls show that even in Alberta, Carney is far more popular than the separatist cause, let alone its assorted leaders.
It’s not quite so simple, but it’s true enough to note that Carney has both distanced himself from, and even dismantled, much of Justin Trudeau’s legacy. And in doing so, he has reaped political benefit.
Still, despite that accumulation of political capital, Carney may be testing the limits of the Liberal Party’s ideological tolerance and flexibility. Otherwise it’s hard to explain — or fathom — why the Prime Minister would feel compelled to revisit and re-open the immigration debate.
When cataloguing the liabilities of the Trudeau legacy, it would be difficult to overlook the mishandling of the immigration file, And yet, in terms of its role in the significant public backlash against Trudeau, it’s probably still understated.
Carney understands this. In fact, he has been one of those voices who have criticized the Liberal record on this file.
Speaking in late 2024, for example, Carney slammed the government for failing to “live up to our values on immigration.” He noted, rightly, that “we had much higher levels of foreign workers, students and new Canadians coming in than we could absorb, that we have housing for, that we have health care for, that we have social services for, that we have opportunities for. And so we’re letting down the people that we let in, quite frankly.”
There’s likely a fairly large consensus as to the truth of that statement two years ago. But what degree of confidence should we have that it is no longer true?
Even in the waning days of the Trudeau era, the government started to pump the brakes on immigration and the number of newcomers to Canada has indeed slowed. Whether that means things are, as Carney now suggests, “under control” remains to be seen.
For one thing, Canada’s population has continued to grow through this policy adjustment. The recent revision by Statistics Canada revealed that instead of declining by 102,000, Canada’s population in 2025 actually increased by 280,000.
Furthermore, the government continues to struggle in quantifying the number of non-citizens currently in the county and, by extension, the number that are supposed to have — but haven’t — been removed.
Nonetheless, as the government gets set to release its immigration targets for the next three years, the Prime Minister is confident enough in either the numbers or his own popularity to shift the approach.
It was New York Times readers treated to the scoop that Canada’s Prime Minister is planning for “some controlled increase in the population.” “So that will happen,” Carney declared, “and we just want to make sure that we’ve got it under control.”
Well, yes, it’s a pretty reasonable expectation that the government get the situation under control before introducing any sort of major shift. I don’t think, however, that Canadians will simply accept Carney’s assertion.
If the government is feeling cocky and emboldened by their own polling, perhaps they should also heed what public opinion surveys are telling us about this specific issue.
A recent Nanos Research poll, for example, showed little appetite right now for what Carney is selling. The poll shows 52 per cent of Canadians in favour of the country accepting fewer people with 35 per cent content with the current level. That’s very few leftover to fall in the “controlled increase” camp.
It’s been lamented by many that the mismanagement of this file has entailed social consequences in addition to the economic fallout. There was, largely, a national consensus around the value of immigration and the ostensibly prudent Canadian approach. That’s clearly still broken.
Alberta and Quebec offer two telling case studies of not just the backlash against immigration policy, but also the extent to which this has inflamed overall discontent with Confederation.
Alongside the Oct. 19 question on Alberta’s future as a province, voters will be asked a number of other questions, five of which concern immigration, with the aim of Alberta both taking more control over the immigration file and ultimately slowing the influx into the province.
It’s safe to say that absent the belated restraint in federal immigration policy, the federalist cause in Alberta would be in much more trouble. Further relieving Ottawa of control on this issue is understandably seen as a path of soothing Albertans’ frustrations.
Carney’s musings on immigration have also been noticed on the campaign trail in Quebec, where the Parti Québécois (PQ) pushed for limits on immigration in what became a successful campaign.
And even though the PQ has promised to shelve an independence referendum until after Donald Trump leaves office, new premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has threatened to hold a referendum on immigration, not dissimilar to what’s on the ballot in Alberta.
It’s hard to imagine that voters in either province won’t or wouldn’t side heavily with their respective premiers on this issue. As such, it’s easy to envision a backlash against Carney’s planned increases.
It may well be that the government is tempted by the GDP boost that high immigration helps to generate, even if it papers over other weaknesses in the economy. Again, Carney himself has noted this phenomenon, calling it a “basic fact,” and that “you can do the math” in terms of how declining population can affect economic growth.
Carney’s political honeymoon is not a political blank cheque and nor should he be so overconfident as to feel as though he’s immune from a similar backlash to his predecessor. This issue has become divisive enough already and it’s playing with fire to thrust this issue back on a fatigued and frustrated Canadian public.
We’ll eventually need a return to responsible immigration growth, but the government has more work to do before that’s feasible and saleable.
Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com
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I doubt that. You underestimate the influence Carney wields over many of my fellow baby boomers. I pay attention to them. They do not merely support his policies, they tend to treat his judgment as self-validating. If they have even noticed he has restricted immigration while they are busy flapping their elbows and if he reopens immigration, I expect those now applauding his restrictions to recast expansion as a brilliant economic strategy. Whatever position Carney adopts, they will find a way to insist that he is right.
I think carney will likely get a couple years grace. One, increased immigration effects take time to show up. Two, as long as Trump is in office it’s difficult to imagine another party taking control of parliament in an election.
But I am in the camp of those Opposed to an increase in immigration. However, on a practical level, the woke policies in schools have created generations of kids not having their own kids and not getting married. As long as that’s happening, then immigration is necessary not only for limited growth, but for even maintaining the current population. That makes the immigration topic complicated because multigenerational Canadians find themselves in a position of becoming a minority, largely because of the decisions they’ve made and the things their own children have been taught. And that is an issue.
But I don’t think maintaining our population via immigration is the answer. I think it’s less fear around climate change and humans killing the planet. More values continuing to be shared around family and the value of children. We’ve stopped valuing children in the same way. I know some will agree with me, but take a look at birth rates and see where population actually grows. It’s immigration more than Canadian births. I view that as a problem.