Nearly two-thirds of Canadians feel immigration levels too high: poll

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Nearly two-thirds of Canadians believe there are “too many” immigrants currently in the country, according to a new national poll.

The survey, conducted by Leger for the Association of Canadians Studies (ACS), suggests an emerging national consensus on the matter. While slightly over a fifth of respondents felt Canada’s immigration levels were “about the right number,” just two per cent thought the country allowed in “too few” people and 65 per cent said there are too many.

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“The rise in the extent to which Canadians believe that there are too many immigrants is continuing and has yet again reached a new height,” Jack Jedwab, the chief executive of ACS, said in an email to National Post. “Virtually no one in Canada currently thinks that there are too few immigrants.”

Jedwab was not surprised by the findings, given that polling in recent years has shown growing dissatisfaction among Canadians on the subject. One year before the pandemic, a similar Leger-ACS poll found just 35 per cent of Canadians felt there were “too many” immigrants while 49 per cent believed it was “about the right number.”

Support for the country’s immigration policy has consistently eroded since then. Subsequent surveys found the share of Canadians feeling there were “too many” newcomers in the country steadily increasing from September 2023 (49 per cent) to February 2024 (50 per cent) and July 2024 (60 per cent).

While residents living in rural communities today are slightly more likely to support the sentiment (69.4 per cent) compared to urbanites (62.9 per cent), the feelings are widespread.

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Likewise, there are small gender gaps on the issue, with men expressing slightly more negative sentiments about immigrants (43 per cent) than women (38 per cent).

“There is a growing national consensus there are too many immigrants that transcends the presence of newcomers in your community and most demographic factors, including whether or not you identify with an ethnic or racialized group,” Jedwab added.

When asked about their view of immigrants, respondents who identify as white had both a slightly more positive (51 per cent) and negative (41 per cent) view than those who identified as not white or a visible minority. Only 48 per cent of the latter group had a very or somewhat positive view of immigrants and 38 per cent had a very or somewhat negative view.

As Canadians have grown weary of record-breaking immigration — more than a million people moved to the country between July 2022 and July 2023 — so, too, have they begun to have a less rosy view of newcomers more broadly. Whereas 61 per cent of respondents had a positive view of immigrants back in February 2024, today that number has shrunk to 50 per cent, and, according to Jedwab, it appears poised to drop further.

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“What’s different in this survey is that negative sentiment towards immigrants is noticeably on the rise and has also reached levels not seen in the last two decades,” he said.

The growing pushback to Canada’s immigration policy is somewhat influenced by socioeconomic levels. The cohort most opposed to high immigration levels were those from the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Almost half (47 per cent) of those making under $40,000 a year were opposed. However, income levels do not give a perfectly clear picture. The next bracket up — $40,000 to $59,000 — expressed the lowest level of disapproval (36 per cent), according to the Leger poll, and the second most-opposed were earners making between $80,000 and $99,000 (46 per cent).

Jedwab was cautious about attributing these trends solely to the economy and the affordability crisis plaguing major cities across the country.

“Economics is driving most of the concern,” Jedwab explained. “The tone of immigration debates outside of Canada is influencing sentiment here as is global instability and its impact on domestic relations between various communities.”

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The poll was conducted between Sept. 20 and 22, with an online sample of 1,612 Canadians. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. A probability sample of the same number of respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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