Carney government says Canada’s immigration is under control. But those in the know highlight what’s going wrong

Some good reads just prior to the levels plan release:

…While Diab has reined in immigration numbers, whether the immigration system is under control is another question altogether.

“A smaller immigration target is not the same thing as a smaller immigration problem,” said Mario Bellissimo, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer and policy analyst.

Depending on who you ask, Canada’s immigration system is either more controlled, stable and sustainable than it has been in years — or still very much a work in progress, plagued by persistent backlogs, constantly changing rules and a critical lack of data on the hundreds of thousands of temporary residents already here.

The question now is whether Ottawa can fix the deeper structural problems before Carney opens the tap again.

Nagging backlogs and long processing

“Reducing numbers is comparatively straightforward,” said Bellissimo. “Building a predictable system that matches intake to capacity, deals fairly with people already here, targets genuine economic needs, reunites families, meets humanitarian obligations, uses technology responsibly, enforces the law and provides timely decisions is much harder.”

6 charts showing Canada’s dramatic immigration changes and economic trends, from Trudeau to Carney

Ottawa has struggled to reduce immigration backlogs and address growing processing times despite huge investments in AI and advanced analytics to modernize the system. The Immigration Department’s website shows that there were more than one million pending permanent residence applications in the queue as of the end of July 2026….

Source: Carney government says Canada’s immigration is under control. But those in the know highlight what’s going wrong