Sixty per cent of Canadians say Canada is admitting too many immigrants: poll

The proportion of Canadians who feel Canada is admitting too many immigrants is ‘the highest on record in this century’

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Sharon Kirkey

Published Jul 25, 2024  •  Last updated 1 day ago  •  4 minute read

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Canadians are growing increasingly uneasy with the number of new immigrants coming to the country, with three out of five people saying there are “too many,” the highest rate of dissatisfaction with Canada’s immigration policies in decades, according to a new poll.

Sixty per cent of Canadian adults surveyed in the July poll said Canada accepts too many newcomers, a 10-percentage-point increase in the number who shared that sentiment in February.

Overall, just 28 per cent of respondents in the new poll, conducted by Leger for the Association of Canadian Studies, said the number of new arrivals is about right. Three per cent said there are “too few” immigrants coming to Canada.

The housing crisis and economic worries are driving a dramatic shift in attitudes over immigration numbers that emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic, said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association of Canadian Studies. Immigration is also moving to the top of national political agendas in the U.S. and many parts of Europe, “and I don’t think Canadians are insulated from those global debates,” Jedwab said.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party significantly increased its seats in the country’s snap election. A June Gallup poll found that 55 per cent of Americans want to see less immigration, up from 41 per cent in 2023. Former U.S. president Donald Trump has promised militarized mass deportations if re-elected.

“My sense is that global instability, whether it’s Russia-Ukraine or the Middle East, is affecting some of this. I think Canadians are taking notice,” Jedwab said.

In a previous poll, Jedwab asked Canadians who felt there are too many immigrants why they felt that way. It was more about economic concerns and far less about identity issues as reflected by the view that immigrants don’t share “Canadian values.”

But the 10-point jump since February in the number Canadians who now feel there are too many immigrants “seems to be coinciding with this sort of global dislocation or global instability,” Jedwab said.

It’s difficult to tease out, but in one test of a possible correlation between global conflicts and changing attitudes towards immigration, some three in four people who strongly supported the police’s dismantling of anti-Israel encampments at McGill University this summer believes that there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.

Recent immigrants also think Canada’s immigration levels are too high, with 42 per cent of more than 2,000 adults who immigrated to Canada within the past decade telling Leger in a poll conducted between December 2023 and February 2024 that the Trudeau Liberals’ new immigration targets are too permissive.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced last year that Canada would ease government immigration targets, capping newcomers at 500,000 annually starting in 2025. Those targets are up from less than 300,000 immigrants yearly when the Liberals came to power in 2015.

Canada plans to admit 485,000 new immigrants this year.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has said he would fix Canada’s “ruined” immigration system by tying population growth to the growth in the supply of housing.

The new Leger poll was conducted from July 12 to July 15. The percentage saying there are too many new immigrants — 60 per cent — is the highest Jedwab has seen “in this century” and is more than double the 28 per cent who felt that way in a federal citizenship and immigration survey in 2006.

Across all political parties, more people feel there are too many immigrants than the right number, according to the Leger poll: 45 per cent of Liberal voters felt that way, compared to 43 per cent who said Canada was accepting “about the right number.” Some 76 per cent of Conservative voters think immigration levels are too high.

Concerns around immigration are highest in Alberta (67 per cent of Albertans said there are too many newcomers), Ontario (62 per cent) and Quebec (61 per cent).

Torontonians are more concerned with immigration numbers than are Montrealers or Vancouverites, though more than half across all three cities feel there are currently too many immigrants coming to Canada. “The perceived degree of pressure on their space and available services may be seen as  higher in the city with, by far, the largest number of immigrants,” Jedwab said.

More than half (54.7 per cent) of non-white respondents also agreed the numbers are too high, while 32.5 per cent felt the numbers are about right.

“Leger didn’t include immigrant and non-immigrant in the sample, but the vast majority of immigrants to Canada are visible minorities,” Jedwab said. “The results make it difficult to argue that prejudice is a main driver of opposition to the number of immigrants,” he said.

The youngest adults are least concerned with current levels of immigration, with 41 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds telling Leger they think there are currently too many immigrants coming to Canada. The oldest (55 and older) were the most concerned, even though, paradoxically, “immigrants to Canada are important for demographic reasons, and to offset the aging of the population and maintain a balanced ratio of retirees to workers,” Jedwab said.

Some 1,784 respondents were interviewed for the ACS-Leger survey. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. A probability sample of 1,784 respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. (National Post, July 25, 2024)