Chris Selley: Canada’s ‘immigration consensus’ endures, despite Ottawa’s worst efforts

Wanting less immigration isn’t inherently a 'backlash' unless the optimal number of immigrants is infinite, which it is not

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Published Sep 11, 2024  •  Last updated 19 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

Even in the face of Canada admitting more immigrants per capita than at the highest levels in decades, and tens of thousands of asylum seekers illegally coming across the U.S. border, this country's "anti-immigration backlash" is not very strong. Photo by Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press/File

Across the political spectrum, there seems to be great angst in this country over what’s commonly termed an “immigration backlash.”

“Justin Trudeau’s legacy will be destroying the Canadian consensus on immigration,” a Globe and Mail headline declared. “Anti-immigrant attitudes have always been present in this country, but never before have they been so prevalent, and so mainstream,” columnist Robyn Urback lamented.

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Bad, unpopular immigration policies with respect to foreign students and temporary foreign workers can be addressed, Sam Routley wrote at The Hub, but “it is yet to be determined whether Canada’s prior immigration consensus can survive these challenges intact.”

“Backlash against immigrants challenges Canada’s welcoming image,” a Reuters headline warned this week. The article cited a Leger poll for the National Post, released last month: “65 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe the Canadian government’s current immigration plan will admit too many people.”

That is certainly one way to interpret the data before us, which include recent polls from the Environics Institute and Nanos Research. But I think it’s actually easier to use those data to argue English Canada’s support for immigration as an overall concept is rock steady — certainly steadier than it was 20 years ago — and that what we’re seeing here is mostly, in fact, an entirely appropriate backlash against bad policy. Bad temporary foreign worker policies, bad student-visa policies, bad housing policies, all of it.

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In the very short term, no question, opinions seem to have shifted. The Environics poll, conducted in September last year, found that the percentage of respondents agreeing there was too much immigration to Canada surged from 27 to 44 per cent in just a year. The same month, 53 per cent of respondents told Nanos that Canada should accept fewer immigrants — up from just 34 per cent in March of the same year.

But Environics has been asking these questions for decades, and the results show two important things: One, that 2022 was in fact an all-time high for support for immigration in Canada; and two, that even amid this “backlash,” support for immigration as a general concept is much higher than it was during the days of this so-called consensus.

From 1977 to 1998, Environics found more Canadians agreed than disagreed that there was too much immigration. The split was as high as 70-30 in the early 1990s. The split Environics reported last year was 51-44.

What we’re seeing here is mostly, in fact, an entirely appropriate backlash against bad policy

Environics also inquired as to why the shift occurred. And it’s very obviously for one major reason: The housing crisis. In 2022, 15 per cent of respondents agreed that “immigrants drive up housing prices (and lead to) less housing for other Canadians”; in 2023, 38 per cent agreed.

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And they’re right. Add demand for a scarce product and prices go up. Canada absolutely should be able to cope with current or higher levels of immigration, and indeed thrive off of it. We’re not exactly short on land or high on population density. But our politicians have never been more motivated to address housing scarcity, and the results have been utterly dismal. For heaven’s sake there were fewer home starts in June 2024 than in June 2022, according to CMHC data.

On the issues more typically associated with anti-immigration sentiment per se, the Environics data show no alarming spikes at all. Only four per cent of respondents cited “security risk” as a factor influencing their desire for less immigration. One-quarter said “immigrants are a drain on public finances (or) cost too much,” or are “bad for (the) economy (and) take jobs from other Canadians” — up from 23 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, which is hardly any change at all in the polling world.

In 2022 and 2023 alike, just 19 per cent of respondents told Environics there were “already too many people in Canada” — the strongest suggestion, I submit, that what we’re seeing here isn’t a backlash against immigration, let alone against individual immigrants and immigrant populations, but a call for some restraint until we get our crap together. Just nine per cent of respondents told Environics they thought immigrants make their community worse; 42 per cent said they make it better.

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For 30 years, Environics has asked Canadians whether they think “there are too many immigrants coming into this country who are not adopting Canadian values” — something you hear often from people who could fairly be called anti-immigration. In 1993, 72 per cent of Canadians agreed with that proposition. Three decades later, amid this so-called “backlash,” the figure was 48 per cent.

Especially at a time when Canadians seem more angst-ridden about the country’s economic future than I can ever remember — potentially fertile soil for xenophobic sentiments, as history shows — these don’t strike me as alarming numbers at all. That’s especially true considering we’ve been admitting more immigrants per capita than at any time since the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and watching tens of thousands of people traipse illegally across the Canada-U.S. border claiming asylum, and been lectured about racism and intolerance by a government that has basically conceded all of its opponents’ points on the immigration file.

Wanting less immigration isn’t inherently a “backlash” unless the optimal number of immigrants is infinite, which it obviously is not. We have enough problems to deal with without inventing new ones. The immigration consensus lives, despite the federal government’s worst efforts.

National Post
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