India's high commissioner says Canada needs 15 million new workers and Carney's team understands
Dinesh Patnaik tied the figure to the prime minister's $1-trillion investment goal. The Prime Minister's Office has not responded, while two co-founders of a 100-million-population plan now hold senior federal posts.
BECOME A MEMBER
Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: India's top diplomat in Ottawa has put a number on Canada's immigration future: 15 million new workers in a decade. He says Mark Carney's team understands the arithmetic, yet the federal government has neither confirmed nor denied that this is where Canada is headed.
Dinesh Patnaik, India's High Commissioner to Canada, laid out the numbers in an interview with CPAC host Marc-André Cossette. Canada has 42 million people and a workforce of 21 million, he said, which is shrinking by 186,000 to 200,000 people a year. Carney wants $1 trillion in new investment over the next decade. According to Patnaik, that means Canada needs to create 15 million jobs. "I don't have to do the math for you," he said, adding that "Prime Minister Carney's team understands this, so we're working together."
Patnaik is doing his job, advancing India's interests, and he has been more forthcoming about the implications than Ottawa. In January, on CBC's Power & Politics, he said Canada should grow to more than 100 million people. The Toronto Sun's Joe Warmington, who reported the latest CPAC remarks, asked the Prime Minister's Office for an explanation. He received no answer.
The 100-million target did not originate in New Delhi. In 2014, Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman co-founded the Century Initiative, which advocates growing Canada's population to 100 million by 2100. Barton, McKinsey's former global managing partner, chaired Justin Trudeau's economic advisory council and later served as Canada's ambassador to China. On August 31, Carney appointed him chair of Invest in Canada, the federal agency tasked with attracting the $1 trillion in investment. Wiseman, a longtime Carney friend, has served as Canada's ambassador to Washington since February.
One architect of the 100-million-population vision now leads the agency pursuing Carney's investment ambitions, while the other holds Canada's most important diplomatic post. The connections are public. What Canadians deserve to know is whether the population growth required to support these ambitions is also part of the government's plan.
Meanwhile, nearly 300 delegates are taking part in a federal trade mission to India, which Ottawa describes as the largest of its kind in more than 30 years. Asked who was participating, the trade minister's office told Warmington that individual companies could decide whether to disclose their involvement.
India has clear reasons to pursue closer ties. According to the Reserve Bank of India, Indians working abroad sent home US$135 billion last year, more than any other country and roughly twice Mexico's US$68 billion. These remittances are a major source of income for India, while emigration also offers opportunities to workers in a country of 1.4 billion people. A growing diaspora can eventually become a political force in its adopted country, too.
Canada has its own interests in the relationship, including a $2.6-billion uranium sale involving Cameco, a pledge to double bilateral trade to $70 billion by 2030, and a planned December visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These are tangible economic gains. But Patnaik has raised a much bigger question about the scale of Canada's future workforce, and Carney's government has yet to address it.
Canada has already experienced the consequences of rapid population growth. The country's population increased by more than one million in 2022 for the first time, and did so again in 2023, when Canada recorded the fastest growth rate in the developed world. Housing costs surged, emergency rooms came under pressure, classrooms filled and international students increasingly turned to food banks.
The Trudeau government eventually acknowledged the strain. Trudeau said temporary immigration had grown "far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb," while then-immigration minister Marc Miller warned that businesses had become "addicted" to temporary foreign workers.
The labour market is also sending a different message from the one implied by a demand for millions of additional workers. Statistics Canada reported that the economy lost 68,000 jobs in September, marking a second consecutive monthly decline. Unemployment stood at 6.5 per cent nationally and seven per cent in Ontario, while roughly 13 per cent of young Canadians seeking work were unemployed.
Against that backdrop, adding millions of workers would raise serious questions about wages, housing supply and public services. Canada has struggled to build enough homes, hospitals and schools to accommodate annual population increases of around one million. Expanding the workforce on the scale Patnaik describes would require a credible plan for meeting those demands.
There is also a question of integration. Canada has welcomed newcomers and built a national identity over generations, but immigration on an unprecedented scale risks outpacing the institutions, language and shared civic expectations that help a country hold together.
None of this is a criticism of a young worker in Punjab seeking a better life, or of a diplomat advancing his country's interests. The responsibility rests with Canada's elected government to explain what it intends to do and what the consequences will be for Canadians already struggling to find work and afford a home.
Carney campaigned on an immigration cap. Yet his investment agency is now chaired by a co-founder of a movement advocating a population of 100 million, while India's high commissioner says the prime minister's team understands the need for 15 million workers over the next decade.
Canadians deserve a direct answer: Is the government planning to bring millions more workers into the country to support its economic ambitions, and, if so, how will it prevent another population boom from overwhelming housing, wages and public services? So far, Ottawa has not answered.
COMMENTS
-
Peter Bradley commented 2026-10-16 00:44:14 -0400We should guess what Carney’s muslim voters will say about bringing in 10 million cow worshippers. -
Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-10-15 23:56:07 -0400 FlagEarlier today, the U. K.-based YouTube channel “The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters” posted a video discussion about this. Even over there, people are noticing that Canada’s “immigration” policy is absurd.
-
Bruce Atchison commented 2026-10-15 23:42:03 -0400High commissioner? What’s he smoking? Ezra pointed out how we’re struggling as it is with the foreigners already here. And we know they settle in big cities. And what about that “social cohesion” the Liberals laud? Canada is being deracinated and nobody seems to mind. Well I sure do!
