Canada didn't live up to its values on immigration over the last few years as it allowed more people into the country than it could absorb, said former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

Carney, who is a special adviser to the federal Liberal Party, made the comments at an event on Wednesday in Ottawa held by Cardus, a Christian think tank.

"I think what happened in the last few years is we didn't live up to our values on immigration," Carney said.

"We had much higher levels of foreign workers, students and new Canadians coming in than we could absorb, that we have housing for, that we have health care for, that we have social services for, that we have opportunities for. And so we're letting down the people that we let in, quite frankly."

Earlier this fall, the Liberal government announced a plan to significantly reduce its immigration target for permanent residents and to dramatically scale back the number of temporary residents in Canada.

Those changes came about after a period of strong population growth and mounting criticism of the government's immigration policies.

Statistics Canada recently reported that the population on July 1 was three per cent higher than a year earlier.

Between 1998 and 2018, annual population growth was less than 1.5 per cent.

With the planned changes to immigration targets, the federal government now estimates Canada's population will decline slightly by 0.2 per cent in 2025 and 2026, before returning to growth of 0.8 per cent in 2027.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that his government did not get the balance right on immigration after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carney also pointed to the pandemic as he dug into what went wrong on immigration policy.

He said Canada chose to loosen its rules in response to pressure from businesses facing a labour shortage. He said the government ended up "losing track" in the process.

He also blamed provinces for underfunding higher education, which pushed institutions to turn to foreign students to make money.

"Do we value higher education in this country or not? Well, if we value higher education, maybe we should start funding our universities," he said. "On the foreign student side, it's more on provincial policy, on squeezing universities, in a sense."