Immigration hitting sour note in Canada’s biggest cities

Article content

Residents in some of Canada’s biggest cities want the Trudeau government to clamp down on immigration. A poll conducted by Maru Public Opinion for CityNews finds that a strong majority either wants immigration stopped for the foreseeable future or to have numbers reduced for the next two years.

Article content

The poll also found that Canadians in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto are split on whether immigration is having a positive or negative impact on their respective cities with 50% across the four cities saying positive and 50% saying negative.

Maru surveyed 1,801 people across the four cities between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6 via an online panel. The survey said that due to Canada’s low birth rate, immigration is needed but that over the last two years the number of people has grown.

“If you were the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship and had to decide what to do for each of the following streams of applicants wanting to enter Canada, what would you choose?” the survey asked while presenting participants with options on how to deal with economic immigrants, family class immigrants, students, temporary foreign workers and refugees.

Article content

Article content

When it comes to refugees, 74% of residents in those cities either want the number reduced for the next two years (47%) or stopped for the foreseeable future (27%). Just 18% said leave the number of refugees coming to Canada at the same level, while 8% said the number should be increased.

International students received the second highest total of reduced or stopped at 71% with 49% saying reduce the number of students allowed and 22% saying stop admissions altogether. For temporary foreign workers, 69% want fewer people coming in with 45% saying they want reduced levels and 24% wanting them stopped.

Article content

Economic-class immigration and family reunification remain more popular, but still have a majority saying both admissions either need to be reduced or stopped.

This poll is the latest evidence that the Trudeau Liberals have broken the public’s trust in the immigration system. Poll after poll and data point after data point back that contention up.

The government has simply lost control of the system on all fronts and now immigration has become a hot political issue in a way it hasn’t been for decades.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Play Video

A recent Leger poll conducted for the Association of Canadian Studies finds that 60% of Canadians now believe we are bringing in too many people. The same question asked five years earlier only found 35% felt the same way.

Article content

Over the past several years, though, the Trudeau government has increased the number of people coming into Canada in every single class.

While regular permanent residents, economic- and family-class immigration is rising to almost 500,000 people per year, Canada took in more than 1.2 million people overall between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024. That increase amounts to a 3% increase in population in the course of one year, a level not seen in Canada since the late 1950s.

All of this comes at a time when Canada is experiencing a housing shortage, which the massive increase in population is not helping. It also isn’t helping the health-care crisis as the population rises dramatically, while health infrastructure simply can’t keep up.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that we are bringing in people faster than we can absorb them and yet his government hasn’t done anything to fix the situation. Until that happens, Canadians will continue to lose faith in a system that is failing them.

Article content