Slim majority of Canadians found reduced immigration levels still too high: government polling

OTTAWA — Shortly after cutting immigration levels, the federal immigration department heard through government-funded polling that a slight majority of Canadians still found this year’s number too high.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada commissioned the survey as part of its annual tracking of public sentiment towards immigration and reported it publicly as part of the government’s disclosures on its public opinion research.

The survey, which was done last November, followed the federal government’s announcement that it would reduce the number of permanent residents by nearly 100,000 in 2025. The target was set at 395,000, down from 485,000 in 2024.

The survey found that 54 per cent of Canadians said they “felt there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.” Another 34 per cent said they felt the number was fine, according to the report.

“When informed that Canada plans to admit 395,000 immigrants as permanent residents in 2025, 52 per cent said that it is too many, 37 per cent that this is about the right number and five per cent that this is too few,” it read.

“When informed that 395,000 immigrants is roughly 20 per cent fewer than Canada planned to admit in 2024, 44 per cent feel this is too many, 39 per cent that this number is about right and 13 per cent that it is too few.”

A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said in a statement that work has begun on setting immigration levels for the next two years, with that plan scheduled to be tabled in the fall, as it has in years past.

“(Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada) will continue work together with partners to establish the best paths forward to ensure that Canada is in position to attract the best talent in the world, while ensuring that overall immigration levels are more sustainable, and that the integrity of the system’s programs remain in tact,” wrote Ren ée LeBlanc Proctor, the minister’s press secretary. 

“We won’t speculate about specific future policy decisions at this time, but note that work on the 2026-2028 levels plan is already underway.”

Determining how many more permanent and temporary residents Canada will allow into the country has been challenged by changing public sentiments around immigration, connected to concerns regarding housing affordability, the availability of doctors and other social supports.

While federal officials say immigration accounted for nearly 98 per cent of Canada’s population growth in 2023, helping to offset an aging population and bringing the country’s population to 41 people million last year, housing experts, economists, and the Bank of Canada all warned that it has contributed to the country’s housing shortage.

Keith Neuman, senior associate at the Environics Institute, a non-profit that has been conducting public opinion research on attitudes around immigration for the past four decades, says Canadians’ perspectives have changed in terms of people thinking about how many immigrants the country could handle.

He says that represents a shift from what research has shown in the past, where Canadians previously focused on who immigrants were and where they were coming from.

“The capacity issue has never really been something that Canadians have thought about, up to this point. And so that’s where the real shift has happened,” he said in an interview.

“It is now become a public issue and a political issue.”

In cutting this year’s numbers, former prime minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged the government “didn’t get the balance quite right” as it sought to address the country’s labour shortages emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting previous plans that set the country on track to accept 500,000 permanent residents by 2025.

Instead, the current immigration plan seeks to further cut the number of permanent residents from 395,000 this year to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. It also noted that more than 40 per cent of the permanent resident intakes for this year would come from temporary residents already in Canada.

Prime Minister Mark Carney named addressing housing affordability as one of the top priorities he has outlined for his new government.

Another one is immigration, with Carney saying in his mandate letter to ministers that they would focus on “attracting the best talent in the world to help build our economy, while returning our overall immigration rates to sustainable levels.”

Neither the Conservative Opposition office nor Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s immigration critic, responded to a request for comment about the party’s position on the current immigration levels plan.

Last week, Poilievre told reporters that Conservatives want “severe limits” on Canada’s population growth, which he said “has been growing out of control” as a result of the Liberals’ immigration policy.

Around that time Rempel Garner also told reporters she does not “fault” those looking to come to Canada, but blames the Liberals for not ensuring it was matching immigration to the capacity for housing and health-care, adding the immigration minister has failed to outline the government’s plan to carry out removals for those no longer allowed in the country.

In Parliament, Rempel Garner discussed the government’s levels plan in terms of saying it showed that “immigration is going up,” as did other Conservative MPs.

Neuman says while immigration has become a more politically polarized issue, with those favouring less of it siding with the Conservatives and Canadians supportive of increases identifying with left-wing parties, it is not an issue that sits top of many Canadians’ minds, unlike in the United States.

In fact, he suggests Canadians have been responding to immigration as more of a national issue than one that has impacted them directly.

The survey the immigration department commissioned last fall reported that nearly half of the respondents said they felt that immigration had a positive impact on their community.

Neuman says it is unlikely Canadians’ feelings towards immigration will change drastically, considering issues like housing remain a problem. However, given Canadians’ attention to U.S. President Donald Trump and the country’s relationship with the U.S., “the issue has kind of receded in the background.”

staylor@postmedia.com

National Post

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