The Bank of Canada already documented what the immigration surge did. Carney is preparing to turn the taps back on anyway.
Ministers have signalled the numbers are going up as the Bank's research on rent, wages, productivity and youth unemployment goes largely unquoted.
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Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: Ottawa is preparing to raise immigration again, even though the Bank of Canada has spent three years documenting what the last surge did to rents, wages, productivity and youth jobs.
Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the federal government must table its new immigration levels plan on or before November 1, which falls on Sunday. Immigration Minister Lena Diab has said the plan is coming "in November as it's scheduled," and on October 16 she made the direction clear. "We have an ambitious agenda. We are going to want to drive growth. We do need people," she said, according to CP24.
Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled the same thing weeks earlier, in an interview with the New York Times rather than a Canadian outlet. "Now the question starts to become, when do we resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada?" he said, adding, "So that will happen, and we just want to make sure that we've got it under control," the Canadian Press reported. The question he posed was one of timing, not whether.
The plan still on the books already sets a high bar. The 2026 to 2028 levels plan calls for 380,000 permanent residents a year, plus 370,000 new temporary residents in each of 2027 and 2028. Together that is roughly 750,000 people a year, more than the population of several provinces, and it serves as the floor from which the Prime Minister is now talking about going higher.
The case for more rests on slowing growth. Statistics Canada reported that the population grew by half of one per cent in the year to July 1, the slowest pace since 1944. Coverage of a Bank of Canada explainer followed. The Hill Times reported the economy "won't grow as fast" because of less immigration, Global News said an aging population and low immigration were "reshaping" the economy, and the Asian Pacific Post declared that the Bank "sounds alarm over immigration cuts."
The Bank's own record tells a fuller story. Richard Dias, a chartered financial analyst and former strategist at Montreal's BCA Research, compiled a list of the Bank's publications in an October 21 post on X. He called the past decade of immigration policy "highly regressive" and wrote that the government, having "seemingly learned nothing," is "dead set on turning back on the taps."
The Canadian government's mass immigration policies of the last 10 years were highly regressive. Having seemingly learned nothing, they are dead set on turning back on the taps rather than letting the country heal.
— Richard Dias (@RichardDias_CFA) October 21, 2026
On cue, the media has begun parroting the government's…
The October 2023 Monetary Policy Report attributed "the strength in rent and other housing costs" partly to "strong housing demand, which is supported by rapid population growth." That December, Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle said in a speech that "shortly after immigration began ramping up in 2015, Canada's vacancy rate started to fall." A Bank staff note the same month found the rise in immigration was "contributing to pressures in inflation components linked to house prices."
The January 2024 report said newcomers were adding pressure to housing supply and helped drive vacancy to record lows, which "underpinned house prices and led to higher rents." In July 2024, the Bank explained that the largest initial impact falls on rental markets "because most newcomers start out as renters." As recently as September, a Bank article stated that "strong population growth drove asking rents higher in recent years."
The research also addresses wages. An April 2024 staff note found that the wages of non-permanent residents, largely temporary workers and students, "are much lower and have fallen over this period." A May 2025 staff paper concluded the economy's productive capacity "grew less than it would have if recent newcomers had the same socio-economic characteristics as in the past," with the effect concentrated in food service, retail and support services. Those are the entry-level jobs employers such as Tim Hortons fill, a chain owned by Restaurant Brands International, whose largest shareholder is the Brazilian-founded investment firm 3G Capital.
Young Canadians have borne much of the cost. A June 2025 staff note said youth account for "a significant portion of the overall increase in unemployment since the start of 2023," which it called "partly due to the high number of immigrants." In a May speech in Montreal, Deputy Governor Nicolas Vincent said a "large influx of young people from abroad" between 2022 and 2024 "intensified competition in Canada for lower-skill and entry-level jobs." Youth unemployment peaked at 14.3 per cent in April and stood at 13 per cent in September, roughly one in eight young people looking for work.
Even the October 8 explainer behind the recent headlines says, beside its line on slower growth, that "fewer immigrants are expected to arrive, which will reduce demand for housing," and that "this could lower pressure on housing costs." The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated the cuts would leave real GDP about 1.7 per cent lower by 2027 but real GDP per person about 1.4 per cent higher, a smaller economy shared among fewer people.
Read together, the documents describe a decade in which costs fell on young renters and entry-level workers while landlords, diploma-selling colleges and low-wage employers benefited. University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud told the Canadian Press he worries about business pressure on the Prime Minister. "He's going to see immigration as a solution for businesses. And that's a problem," he said.
Carney once ran the Bank of Canada and knows how to read its reports. If the new plan raises the numbers anyway, Canadians are left to ask whom the government is working for.
GUEST: Amanda Achtman on the Liberal government's latest MAiD update
COMMENTS
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Jane Vandervliet commented 2026-10-30 21:28:56 -0400 FlagMAiD is the. Government’s method of speeding the baby boom generation through the statistics…. persuade them to remove themselves. Pretty cheap method since end of life care is the most expensive part of most people’s lives.
It is true that it is unknown what a MAiD victim is experiencing once the first paralyzing drug is given, but I have read a number of opinions of medical personnel that the second drug makes the person drown by their lungs filling with fluid from inside their own body but they can’t protest or try to save themselves. I sure hope it is not true. -
Deborah Rotzinger commented 2026-10-30 20:59:10 -0400 FlagIn Amanda’s list of resources at the end of her talk, she didn’t mention Delta Hospice Society which is a great resource for people who don’t want MAID. They issue free laminated wallet sized cards that say you don’t want MAID, as well as a written document verifying that you are on their national database as someone who doesn’t want MAID. Easy to slip in with your will.