If Prime Minister Mark Carney wanted a low-key minister to handle the Liberals’ immigration mess and stay out of the headlines, he may have found the right person in Lena Metlege Diab.
Whether or not by design, Immigration Minister Diab, unlike her predecessors, has maintained a low profile. That’s despite relentless attacks by the opposition Conservatives over her invisibility and competence in the high-stakes portfolio.
The MP from Nova Scotia has been lambasted by critics for relying on bureaucrats to answer questions at committee, and being unclear in communicating policies and less responsive than her predecessors.
In the year and a bit since she was tapped by Carney to lead the file, Diab seems to have delivered what the prime minister has asked her to do in returning overall immigration to more “sustainable levels” — at least in terms of slashing the immigrant population.
A Parliamentary Budget Officer report this year projected the share of non-permanent residents will fall under five per cent of Canada’s population by the end of 2027, aligning with the government target.
But the system the Nova Scotia MP inherited is still in flux, rife with uncertainty, backlogs and long processing times — issues that experts say need to be urgently addressed to restore stability and faith in Canadian immigration.
Diab ‘turns down political heat’
“Her mandate certainly was to turn down the political heat on immigration, and I would say that she’s done that successfully,” said Victoria-based immigration lawyer Kyle Hyndman.
“A lot of the immigration conversation has got really focused on numbers. We’re not talking about bushels of soya beans here. We’re talking about people who are very different in terms of what they bring to Canada and in terms of what they need. This conversation about reaching a sustainable level of immigration is only half of the question.”
And the falling numbers of temporary residents are what Diab has wanted to register with Canadians.
The latest immigration data showed new international student arrivals between January and April were down 89 per cent; new foreign worker arrivals down 37 per cent; and new asylum claims down 63 per cent, compared to the same quarter two years ago. For the second year in a row, Canada is expected to have zero population growth.
“Rapid population growth, especially in temporary residents, has put pressure on housing, services and the systems communities rely on,” Diab told a parliamentary committee meeting. “Our plan brings immigration back to sustainable, predictable levels.”
Under her tenure, the Liberals also passed two new immigration-related laws: Bill C-3, to remove the one-generation limit for the passage of citizenship by descent for children born abroad; and Bill C-12, to restrict asylum eligibility and give officials the powers to cancel and suspend immigration documents and processing en masse.
‘Lack of stability in the system’
Toronto immigration lawyer Max Berger said many of the initiatives and measures to rein in temporary residents — and the new legislation — started before Diab but are continuing under her mandate.
While the minister is keen on numbers, he said the cuts to international students and permanent resident spots are “problematic” and have prevented needed talent from coming or staying.
Berger said the lack of fairness is still an issue for temporary residents who have been in Canada, are caught up in changing rules and now find themselves in limbo. There have also been “seismic” disruptions to asylum seekers who had their refugee claims cancelled overnight under Bill C-12 and since May have lost their supplemental health-care coverage.
“This constant state of flux negates predictability and no one knows what’s going to happen next,” said Berger, co-president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association. “This is a problem. There’s a lack of stability in the immigration system.”
Meanwhile, ongoing concerns over immigration fraud remain, with unscrupulous agents going unpunished, said Toronto immigration lawyer Gabriela Ramo. Bad actors and employers, for instance, are still charging exorbitant amounts of money for fake job offers to temporary residents desperate to stay, she noted.
University of Toronto political science professor Phil Triadafilopoulos said Canada’s immigration system is still in transition, rolling back a messy expansion under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, especially after the pandemic. And the repair can only be done in “a piecemeal way,” he added.
He said the issues of temporary residents have built up ever since Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s time, and exploded in 2022 and ‘23 as politicians caved to the demands of colleges and universities to recruit foreign students to offset government funding cuts, as well as the push by businesses seeking easy access to foreign labour.
“The expectation is that most people will leave, but we know from experience that a large number of people will not leave and will overstay and live in a more precarious way,” said Triadafilopoulos.
To Carney, he added, Diab seemed to be the right person to keep immigration issues out of the news cycle because the PM needed someone to do things quietly and not want to be in the news all the time, to “decompress immigration.” His sense is that the Prime Minister’s Office is now steering the boat and trying to return the Immigration Department to an operation led by civil servants.
“You need someone to follow the lead,” said Triadafilopoulos, praising Diab for being “very good” at consistent messaging. “I don’t think her role is to be super-creative or even a public face” for the Immigration Department.
A jump from Nova Scotia politics
The daughter of immigrant parents from Lebanon, Diab — fluent in English, French and Arabic — was born in Halifax and worked as a lawyer before entering provincial politics in 2013. She was Nova Scotia’s first female attorney general and justice minister, and was immigration minister before jumping into federal politics, running for the Liberals in 2021.
The backbencher was parachuted in to lead the federal department in May 2025 by Carney and has become a target of the Conservatives. At times, Diab seemed to struggle to respond to questions by the opposition and needed senior immigration officials to come to her defence at committee meetings.
“You are a very bad minister,” Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner called Diab amid a sparring match at a parliamentary committee meeting in December, hinting she would be soon shuffled out of the job.
At another meeting in May, the newly minted deputy immigration minister Ted Gallivan had to step in to respond to questions on Diab’s behalf about funding to hotels to house asylum seekers, security screening and the tracking of temporary residents.
Diab also faced backlash by lawyers and advocates for sporadically and informally — rather than on official government channels — releasing details of a highly anticipated plan to transition 33,000 temporary residents to permanent residency. She was accused of fuelling misinformation, speculation and exploitation of vulnerable migrants by unscrupulous agents.
Triadafilopoulos said it’s hard for the opposition to attack Diab politically when the government is bringing results in immigration reductions, and the public is less drawn to technical debates over policies.
“If Michelle Rempel looked at the numbers, she’d say, ‘Yes, there’s been reductions in all these categories,’” he said. “It’s not a good thing for a shadow minister to say, ‘Great job. You’re doing so much better,’ than to go back to the Trudeau years and say, ‘What a disaster.’”
Diab declined an interview request for this article. In a statement, her office reiterated that the government has taken important steps to strengthen program integrity, enhance border security, improve information-sharing and provide additional tools to manage the immigration system effectively.
The department, it emphasized, has surpassed its targets to attract francophone immigration outside Quebec, launched a one-time initiative to transition 33,000 temporary workers in smaller communities to permanent residence, and “refocused” economic immigration programs on Canada’s long-term needs.
The messaging is consistent with what Diab told MPs in May, when she was grilled by the opposition for hours on immigration fraud, temporary residents committing crimes, judges offering non-permanent resident criminals “sweetheart sentences” to avoid deportation, fair distribution of asylum seekers among provinces, and how members of the sanctioned Iranian regime got their visas to Canada, among other topics.
No matter what she was thrown, Diab managed to stick to her talking points.
“I want Canadians to know that we are working hard for them. We are being transparent. We have a plan. We are managing migration. We clearly have results,” Diab said at the end of that meeting, which concluded at 11:01 p.m.
“I told the media, which is true, that we have a difficult task, but we will do it, and we will deliver for Canadians.”
