Polling Shows Canadians Are Moving Strongly Against Mass Immigration

Immigration has been a touchy issue in Canada for the past couple of decades. People who take issue with the number of immigrants coming to Canada were automatically labeled as being “fringe” or “extreme” by the media and political establishments, but in spite of this Canadians are still becoming far more skeptical about immigration. 

Back around 2017, 52 percent of Canadians would have said that the right number of immigrants are coming into the country every year, and only 23 percent said the number was too high. As of 2022, according to a poll released from Leger, the rates of people choosing each opinion in the poll have virtually reversed.

In Leger’s polling, they found 49 percent of Canadians said that the country is admitting too many immigrants, while only 31 percent said we admit the right number, and 5 percent said we don’t admit enough (16 percent were undecided). 

Of course Bloc Quebecois, Conservative, and People’s Party respondents were the most immigration skeptical in the poll, but it shouldn’t be overlooked how significant it is that 30 percent of Liberals and 36 percent of NDP voters also thought Canada is admitting too many new immigrants. 

Considering how strongly the Liberal and NDP alliance government grandstands on immigration, and imply anyone who has a problem with the large influence of immigrants is bigoted, having one-third of their own parties thinking they are on the wrong side of this issue is seriously bad news for them. 

While 22 percent of Conservative respondents said the number of immigrants coming into the country was the right number, the Conservative Party has not made opposition to high rates of immigration a central issue to its brand. 

Even then, asking voters if they think it’s reasonable for the Liberal government to increase immigration to 500,000 per year by 2025 is still a rather vague question. Many people cannot understand the implication of bringing that many people into Canada each year, many of whom cannot speak English or French, and will need extra assistance from the government to get settled in. 

When Leger in the same poll then asked Canadians if they think the Liberal government’s immigration plans will create excessive demand for housing, healthcare, and social services in Canada, the entire crowd being polled becomes extremely skeptical towards immigration. 

75 percent of respondents to this question said they were either “very concerned” (42%) or “somewhat concerned” (33%) about the stress immigration would have on housing and services, and only 19 percent of respondents were either “not very concerned” (15%) or “not at all concerned” (4%).

Women were near the top of the groups in the “very concerned” category of respondents at 46 percent, which makes sense due to women usually being risk-averse in the way they vote in elections. This should terrify the Liberals and NDP; if the Conservatives and Bloc as smart enough to push on immigration undermining our social services and housing market, women may abandon the Liberals and NDP for the more restrictive immigration policies of centre-right parties. 

Although the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has been nervous about talking about social issues, he should take a look at polling on issues like immigration. If the Conservative Party runs on restricting immigration to half of what it is today or putting in place a point system to ensure people immigrating to Canada can also properly integrate economically, they will clobber the Liberals and NDP. Centre-left voters tend to be very concerned about public services and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh are undermining those services with mass immigration.