FIRST READING: The provincial revolt against immigration

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

In just the last month, two provinces have come out hard against Ottawa’s immigration agenda, promising to actively obstruct the Carney government’s pledge to once again hike targets.

In a Monday vote, Albertans overwhelmingly rejected an option to hold a binding referendum on secession, but voted “yes” on four ballot questions about constraining immigration.

This included questions on restricting migrant access to health care, voting, public schools and social benefits. Albertans also endorsed a proposal for Alberta to take “increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels.”

In a meeting between Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney held just before the referendum vote, she emphasized the changing provincial mood on immigration.

“I have bad news for you, prime minister, all of the premiers are interested in talking about immigration and how we will be able to reform it,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, the province just elected immigration skeptic Paul St-Pierre Plamondon as its new Parti Québécois premier.

The PQ campaign platform pledged to bring in the sharpest immigration controls in Canada, including an immediate halving of the number of permanent immigrants entering the province.

In 2025, 60,132 permanent immigrants were admitted into Quebec. The PQ has promised to slash this to 35,000.

All the while, St-Pierre Plamondon is on record attributing social ills such as rising crime to poor migrant integration, and is even known to accuse Ottawa of succumbing to “open borders postnationalism.”

And St-Pierre Plamondon heads up a minority government where the balance of power may well be held by a newly elected caucus of Quebec Conservatives, who toes an even harder line on immigration.

“We have a prime minister in Canada who wants to raise immigration … He seems nostalgic for the Trudeau era when we lost control of immigration,” Quebec Conservative Leader Eric Duhaime said in a French-language reaction to the Alberta referendum results.

He added, “I think there are concerns in Alberta which are also found in Quebec.”

Quebec, unlike any other province, has been able to set its own immigration targets since 1991.

Provincial control over immigration was one of the tenets of the 1987 Meech Lake Accord, a package of Constitutional amendments negotiated by the government of then-prime minister Brian Mulroney.

When the Accord failed, the Mulroney government instead signed an agreement granting immigration powers to Quebec and no one else.

On Wednesday, Carney didn’t immediately reject the idea that a similar accord could be struck with Alberta. “We’ll see,” was what he told reporters outside a Parliament Hill caucus meeting, before adding that “Quebec is distinct.”

At a press conference in Kitchener, Ont., last week, Immigration Minister Lena Diab confirmed rumours that her government was planning to raise immigration levels from their current rate.

“We have an ambitious agenda. We are going to want to drive growth. We do need people,” she said.

This was in addition to comments made by Carney in a Sept. 27 New York Times interview where he expressed an intention to “resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada.”

The Carney government has consistently claimed that it has brought immigration levels “under control” following the record migration surges that characterized the final years of Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau.

In just the three years between 2022 and 2025, Statistics Canada tracked an influx of 2.8 million people — a rate of migrant intake well beyond any other country in the OECD.

And as has been documented by analysts such as the Bank of Canada, the surge mostly broke with the Canadian pattern of predominantly admitting high-skilled economic immigrants.

This wave, by contrast, was mostly low-skilled, lightly vetted migrants who entered the country on temporary status. “Not only has Canada experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration, but the composition of recent newcomers has been markedly different than in the past,” reads one Bank of Canada analysis from March.

Canada’s population growth has indeed dropped to historic lows under Carney, largely because of sharp reductions in international student admissions. In 2025, overall population grew by just 0.5 per cent.

But these reductions are mostly still a comedown from the post-COVID peaks, as immigration still remains at record highs as compared to the pre-COVID normal.

In 2019, Canada admitted 341,180 permanent residents and had a non-permanent resident population of about 1.3 million.

This year, even after the Carney government’s reductions, Canada is slated to bring in 380,000 permanent residents, while the population of non-permanent residents stands at about 2.8 million.

Last week, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced that it would be waiving a requirement for employers to prove that they had offered a high-skilled job to a Canadian before offering it to a foreign national.

Previously, any employer looking to bring in foreign labour under one of two high-wage, high-skilled immigration streams had to first file a labour market impact assessment proving that no Canadian was available to do the job.

This requirement is now waived, although it remains in place for lower-skilled positions, such as those granted via the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

Wrote IRCC in a statement, “this change will make the process simpler and more efficient for candidates and employers.”

There are plenty of Canadian elections that have been swayed by the United States, but the Americans may be in the late stages of an election for which the precise opposite will be true.

The White House’s ongoing trade war with Canada seems to be an electoral liability in particularly tariff-exposed states such as Michigan. Tariffs on Canadian exports have thrown a wrench into the state’s Canadian-integrated auto sector, which is proving to be a decisive factor in several races to be decided in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

The most conspicuous result is that several high-profile Michigan Republicans have disavowed the trade war and even expressed their love of Canada.

“Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy,” Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers says in a campaign ad.

The state’s Republican nominee for governor, John James, has similarly been embracing the Maple Leaf. “Trump does not speak for Michigan,” he told CBS. “I understand how important trade is with Canada.”

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.