Carney Just Signalled Immigration Will Rise Again. Here Is Why That Matters for Your 2029 Presale

For three years, Ottawa’s message on immigration has been simple: fewer newcomers, fewer students, fewer temporary workers. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled that chapter may be ending.

In an interview with The New York Times, reported by The Canadian Press on September 29, Carney said Canada’s immigration system is “back under control,” and that the question now is when to resume “some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada.”

No new numbers were announced. But for anyone weighing a Metro Vancouver presale right now, this matters more than most headlines do, because a presale is a bet on what the market looks like three or four years from now. Population is the single biggest driver of housing demand in this region, and the federal dial on it may be about to turn.

What Carney actually said, and what he did not

It is worth being precise here, because this story is already being overstated online. Carney did not announce higher targets. He did not say when an increase would begin, or how large it would be. What changed is the tone. Each of the last three federal immigration plans was built around cuts, especially to temporary residents such as international students and foreign workers. This is the clearest sign yet that Ottawa sees that correction as largely done.

The real answer comes soon. By law, the federal government must table its next Immigration Levels Plan on or before November 1, and that plan will set targets for 2027 through 2029. As immigration lawyer Colin Singer notes in his breakdown, the key question is whether a “controlled increase” means higher permanent resident targets, a slower pace of temporary resident cuts, or both.

Where the numbers stand today

The current plan, released in November 2025, holds permanent resident admissions flat at 380,000 a year from 2026 to 2028, and cuts new temporary resident arrivals from 385,000 in 2026 to 370,000 in 2027 and 2028. It also aims to bring the temporary resident share of Canada’s population below 5% by the end of 2027.

The effect is showing up clearly in the data. According to Statistics Canada’s September 23 release, Canada’s population was 41,798,407 on July 1, 2026. That is growth of just 0.5% over the year, which immigration.ca notes is the smallest July to July increase since 1944/45. The number of non-permanent residents fell to 2,779,774, about 6.7% of the population, still above the 5% goal.

British Columbia is right in the middle of this. B.C.’s population was 5,710,598 on July 1, up just 0.1% for the quarter, while the number of non-permanent residents in the province fell another 1.4% to 465,514.

Why Metro Vancouver felt the cuts first

Most temporary residents rent. When that inflow slowed at the same time a wave of new condos and purpose-built rentals completed, the rental market loosened quickly.

CMHC’s 2026 Mid-Year Rental Market Update puts numbers on it. Vancouver’s apartment vacancy rate hit 3.7% in 2025, above the 2% to 3% range CMHC now estimates as “balanced” for this market. Asking rents for two-bedroom apartments in Vancouver were roughly 10% lower at the end of 2025 than at the start of 2024. CMHC also models population change as a slight drag on Vancouver household growth in 2026, the only major factor pulling in that direction.

That rental softness is a big part of why investors stepped back from presales, and why so many finished units are sitting unsold. We covered that side of the story in Metro Vancouver’s $4.4 billion unsold condo problem.

Why this matters more for presale buyers than anyone else

Here is the part I think most people are missing. If you buy a presale today, you are not buying into today’s market. You are buying into the market that exists when your building completes, likely in 2029 or 2030.

Two things are lining up for that window. First, supply is shrinking. CMHC says competition from investor-owned rental condos “will decline in the coming years as condominium apartment completions are projected to fall sharply.” Very few new projects are launching today, which means very few will complete in 2029 and 2030. Second, if Ottawa does move toward a controlled increase in population, demand would be rising into that thinner supply, not falling.

That combination, lower future supply and steadier demand, tends to reward buyers who commit early. It is also exactly the opposite of how the market feels right now, which is why prices and incentives are where they are.

The case for caution

I do not want to oversell this. There are real reasons to be careful.

Not everyone agrees an increase is the right move. The C.D. Howe Institute’s immigration targets council, which includes former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, recommended in August that Ottawa keep cutting temporary resident numbers. Even if permanent targets rise, temporary resident numbers are likely to stay tightly managed, and temporary residents are a major source of rental demand. A “controlled increase” may look very different from 2022.

Population is also only one input. Interest rates, construction costs, the B.C. election on October 24, and the inventory of unsold units all matter. A shift in federal tone does not change any of those overnight.

What buyers should do with this

If you are buying to live in, this is a reason not to wait for a bottom that may already be forming. The best negotiating leverage tends to exist before the narrative changes, not after.

If you are buying as an investor, focus on what renters will want in 2030, not what is sitting empty today. CMHC found that vacancies are highest in buildings completed after 2020 and in units near post-secondary institutions, while family-sized units remain in tighter supply. That tells you where the renter demand actually is.

Either way, watch the November 1 levels plan closely. If permanent targets rise and the temporary resident cuts slow, it confirms the turn. If targets stay flat, the current buyer’s market likely has more room to run.

The bottom line

Carney did not change Canada’s immigration policy last week. He told us which direction it is likely to move next. For Metro Vancouver presale buyers, that matters because you are buying a home that will be delivered into a market with far less new supply, and possibly more people looking for a place to live.

If you want help finding the projects that make sense for that 2029 and 2030 window, register for VIP presale access at vancouverdwelling.ca. I will send you new launches, incentives and the numbers behind them before they hit the market.