That's not what your civil servants said and that's not what the CBC reported.
The same CBC article, Minister, also said:
The IRCC sources are also critical of McKinsey's possible influence over Canada's immigration targets.
Ottawa announced a plan this fall to welcome 500,000 new permanent residents each year by 2025, with an emphasis on fostering economic growth.
The target and its stated justification follow similar conclusions in the 2016 report of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, chaired by McKinsey's then-global head Dominic Barton.
The advisory council recommended a gradual increase in permanent immigration to 450,000 people per year to respond to labour market dynamics. At the time, Canada was accepting about 320,000 permanent residents.
John McCallum, the immigration minister at the time, expressed his reservations about the “huge figure” presented in the report.
But one of the sources at IRCC said the department was quickly told that the advisory council's report was a foundational plan.
Again, why doesn't the department have the capacity or the expertise to set policy around immigration targets rather than needing them to be recommended by McKinsey?
Minister, it was stated in reporting by the CBC that it is not the Department of Immigration that was setting this policy; it was McKinsey.