Poilievre accuses government of cooking books on immigration

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Friday accused the government of hiding the facts on the number of newcomers it’s bringing to Canada, despite the focus in the new immigration levels plan on people who are already here.

In Winnipeg on Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the one-time permanent residency measures in the levels plan are about making longtime temporary residents permanent.

But Poilievre said at a news conference in Brampton, Ont., the current government is blowing past the Trudeau government’s immigration numbers with plans to grant permanent residency to 200,000 temporary residents this year, in addition to the broad target of 380,000 permanent residents.

“It will bring the total number of new permanent residents to 650,000, by far a record and much bigger than any of the years when Justin Trudeau was prime minister,” Poilievre said.

“We love immigration for people in numbers that we can absorb, where there are jobs, health care and housing, but not when the numbers exceed our capacity to absorb people. It is not fair to immigrants. It is not fair to people already here.”

Carney said the workers expected to receive permanent residency under the new levels plan are people who have been in Canada for years and whose workplaces apply annually to renew their permits.

“They are members of the community, as I say, and they are in many respects — in all respect — permanent residents of the country and we’re formalizing it,” Carney said Friday.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s office declined a request to interview her about the newly tabled immigration levels plan. She also did not take questions after the plan was tabled on Thursday.

Diab did not face any questions on the levels plan from the opposition during Friday’s question period, despite being in the chamber on a day when many MPs are on their way back to their home constituencies.

Immigration department officials said during a not-for-attribution technical briefing Friday that the vast majority of those eligible for the one-time plan to shift 200,000 people to permanent residency are already in Canada.

That one-year program will select, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, 100,000 people here on work visas who already have applied for permanent residency.

The other 100,000 applicants will be chosen from humanitarian permanent residency streams. Government officials say this is meant to clear a decade-long backlog of applications.

Those applicants include about 32,000 former Hong Kong residents who came to Canada through a special program to flee persecution from the Chinese government, and nearly 19,000 Ukrainians who came here through a program for those fleeing Russia’s invasion.

“So these are people who are not permanent in terms of the classification, but are effectively permanent residents and we’re recognizing that,” Carney said.

“It’s the right thing to do and we are absolutely clear about that, and it’s within the context of a sustainable immigration system.”

Andy Wong, president of the Canada-Hong Kong Link, said this is welcome news for those who came to Canada on the Hong Kong pathway.

“It’s even better than we expected because we thought, like, maybe they would try to have a one-time measure gradually for three years to take care of backlog,” Wong said. “So that is a very pleasant surprise and we absolutely are delighted.”

He extended thanks to the Liberal, New Democrat and Conservative MPs who called for expedited permanent residency for those who came on the Hong Kong pathway.

Roy Lee, a former Hong Kong resident with a permanent residency application, said those using the pathway program aren’t technically refugees, but rather people who came to Canada after the Chinese government cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.

“We may return to Hong Kong without any sentences,” Lee said, adding that those who fled the Chinese city fear someday crossing “the red line of the Hong Kong government.”

“So what we are afraid of is the hidden, invisible bottom line that we may somehow reach it in the future and maybe we will suddenly get sentenced,” he said.

Department officials say this humanitarian permanent residency program will include about 45,000 family admissions for spouses, common law partners and children, plus about 12,600 people who have been approved for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds but whose applications have not been finalized.

The stated goal of this program is to reduce application wait times to the 12-month target.

The government says the broad pool of 380,000 permanent residents will be chosen mostly from people already in Canada on work and study visas, with some successful applicants coming from outside the country.

Poilievre also said the Temporary Foreign Worker Program should not be open to communities with unemployment rates higher than 5.5 per cent.

The government signalled in the budget it intends to reform that program in collaboration with the provinces, but the plan is light on details at this point.

There are restrictions in place on low-wage temporary worker applications in census metropolitan areas where unemployment is above six per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2026.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press