More Canadians believe there was “too much immigration” in 2023 – The Concordian
Amid inflation and affordable housing concerns, Canadians’ attitude on immigration grows negative, with similar trends observed in Quebec.
The number of Canadians who believed that the country was receiving too many immigrants went up by 17 percentage points in 2023. This is the largest yearly increase in nearly 50 years since the survey was first conducted, the Environics Institute found.
On Oct. 3, Andrew Parkin shared the results of the study in a presentation at Concordia titled “What happened to the ‘Canadian consensus’ on immigration?” Parkin is the executive director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a Toronto-based not-for-profit organization that tracks public opinion on social and policy issues among Canadians.
The presentation was organized by the Institute for Research on Immigration and Society, a Concordia University research group led by Mireille Paquet, assistant professor in the department of political science.
Paquet said that the survey results by the Environics Institute provide unique insights into the evolution of Canadians’ attitude towards immigration.
“The information we saw today captures a lot of our intuition,” Paquet said. “But I haven’t seen, in the Canadian context, any other data that has captured the evolution over time as well.”
In the survey, the share of respondents who agreed that there was too much immigration went up to 44 per cent in 2023 from 27 per cent in 2022.
There was a similar trend in Quebec, with 37 per cent in 2023 agreeing that there was too much immigration compared to 25 per cent in 2022. During the same period, Ontario had a 20 percentage point increase.
Parkin’s presentation showed that from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, a majority of Canadians believed that there was too much immigration.
This trend reversed around the turn of the 21st century when, for the first time, a majority of Canadians stated that the level of immigration was not a concern.
The survey also showed that when asked what the top issue facing the country was, the most common answers were inflation, followed by affordable housing, unemployment, health care, and finally immigration.
Parkin said the shift in attitude toward immigration needs to be understood within this context.
“We see a dramatic change of answers to [whether there is too much immigration], but it’s linked to dramatic changes around cost of living and housing affordability and not actually to people thinking that the number one issue facing the country is immigration,” Parkin said.
This is also reflected in the fact that a vast majority of Canadians — 74 per cent — continued to believe that immigration was overall positive for the economy, despite an 11 percentage point decline compared to 2022. In Quebec, the numbers were similar, at 75 per cent.
According to the survey, only 38 per cent of Quebecers believed that immigration threatened Quebec culture. Meanwhile, 73 per cent of francophone Quebecers believed the French language was under threat.
There has been positive economic news in recent months, such as inflation cooling off and the Bank of Canada cutting interest rates. On the immigration front, the federal government has adopted several measures, such as slashing study permits to international students, ending exemptions for visitors to apply for work permits, and freezing targets on the number of permanent residents through 2026.
However, Parkin doesn’t expect these recent developments to deeply impact public sentiment on immigration.
“I think the problem is the underlying conditions with housing are unlikely to change very quickly and at the end of the day I think that’s where the public is going to take its cue,” he said. “The news headlines around any policy change don’t last very long, but the news headlines around the cost of housing will continue.”
The Environics Institute will publish its 2024 survey results later this month, but Parkin said early analysis points toward them being consistent with 2023 results.