Popular support for more immigration has cratered. Politicians are taking note
Canada's large immigrant population has long been regarded as a virtue — but new data suggests popular opinion on adding more newcomers has gone through a seismic shift after years of explosive growth.
For much of the last 25 years, immigration was something of a third rail in Canadian politics, with few elected officials publicly questioning its value. On that issue, too, there's been a major about-face.
At the Liberal caucus retreat in Edmonton this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney put the immigration system on notice, saying recent levels have not been "sustainable" and a more "focused" approach is required. "It's clear that we must improve our overall immigration policies," he said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is going further than he has in the past, calling for "very hard caps," blasting the Liberals for taking in "too many, too quickly" while demanding the temporary foreign worker program be scrapped altogether.
B.C. Premier David Eby, a New Democrat, is also blaming what he calls Ottawa's flawed immigration policies for filling up homeless shelters and food banks in his province.
Recent public opinion data can help explain why politicians are making such a hard pivot.
A survey from Nanos Research published this week found nearly three-quarters of Canadian respondents now support reducing the number of new immigrants.
Abacus Data, another polling firm, has also been tracking the crumbling support. What was once a relatively marginal political issue has climbed up the list of national priorities. Nearly a third of voters surveyed this month said immigration is one of their top-three issues.
That data follows earlier findings from the Environics Institute, which reported roughly six in 10 Canadians say too many immigrants are coming in — a 31 percentage point swing in just three years' time and one of the highest levels recorded since the firm started asking that question in 1977.
"It's almost like whiplash in terms of how fast public opinion changed on that question. Think about the last 10 years, we went from Canada welcoming Syrian refugees with open arms to a posture today that is very closed off," David Coletto, the CEO of Abacus Data, said in an interview.
Young people in particular, who are facing higher unemployment rates and housing troubles, are more likely than others to favour abolishing the temporary foreign worker program, Coletto said.
"I think the majority view is — actually I know the majority view is — close it down and and let's reset to make sure we can kind of catch up on some of those things we feel are harder to get," he said.
This attitude change comes after the last Liberal government loosened restrictions on "non-permanent" residents after the COVID-19 crisis and amid a labour shortage.
The result was a massive spike in international students — the number of active study permits hit one million in 2023 — and temporary foreign workers on former prime minister Justin Trudeau's watch.
The population grew by about one million people a year for three years in a row, according to Statistics Canada data — unusually high growth rates for a developed country.
There are only a few historical comparisons, including the early 20th century, when Canada was many times smaller, and the post-Second World War baby boom.
That surge has tested the housing market, health care capacity and Canadians' patience.
Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo and an expert on Canada's immigration system, said past Liberal policies wrecked the Canadian consensus that adding more people is generally a good thing.
"The vast majority of Canadians are clearly turning against immigration but it doesn't mean they are nativistic or anti-immigrant or xenophobic. They're just opposed to what they've seen. They feel like the government has not managed this system properly — and they haven't," he said in an interview.
"This was the Trudeau government. The blame ultimately falls at their front door. There's no question in my mind about that. Canada had an incredible record on immigration and now the subject — it's toxic."
But Skuterud said it's not just the Trudeau Liberals who deserve some of the blame.
He said the Opposition Conservatives were largely silent on surging immigration levels until recently. They could have been ringing alarm bells earlier about what Skuterud describes as an unsustainable intake.
The Conservatives are speaking out now, he said, as recent data suggests immigration is at much more manageable levels.
The last Liberal government capped international student permits and tightened the temporary foreign worker program. It also lowered the permanent resident admission target from 500,000 to 395,000 for this year.
Statistics Canada reported that Canada's population experienced near-zero growth in the first quarter of 2025.
"The Conservatives only started to question immigration after all the damage had been done and after the opinion polls changed," Skuterud said.
While feeling dejected about the political environment that allowed the influx to go unchecked, Skuterud said there's a relatively easy fix: go "back to the way we used to do things."
In an interview with CBC News, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, the party's immigration critic, said the issue will be front-and-centre in the party's messaging this fall, with proposals "that will restore balance and the faith that a lot of Canadians used to put into the immigration system."
She said immigration levels have simply been "too high" and that's why so many Canadians have regrettably turned on the idea of welcoming more newcomers.
"The Liberals brought in too many people in too short a period of time. This is why we're saying abolish the temporary foreign worker program," Rempel Garner said.
"We have a state-sponsored intervention that supports an indentured underclass instead of promoting policies that employ Canadian workers," she said.
Even in Carney's caucus, there's pressure to reform the program.
Liberal MP Marc Miller, the former immigration minister, said the TFW program "definitely needs to be fixed. It has problems, there's LMIA fraud."
Miller said industry "has become addicted to temporary work in Canada."
Asked what sort of changes could be coming this fall, a spokesperson for the current minister, Lena Diab, said she "can't speculate on future policy decisions" but reiterated "attracting top talent while ensuring sustainable levels of immigration is one of our top priorities."
Karen Cocq, the co-executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said immigrants are being unfairly blamed for some of the country's issues.
She said corporate landlords, big grocery chains, abusive employers and others are responsible for the housing crunch, the cost-of-living crisis and a faltering economy — not migrants.
She also questioned Conservative claims that TFWs are taking jobs away from students, who faced high unemployment rates this summer.
"The majority of TFWs work in agriculture, trucking, construction. These are not the kinds of industries where summer jobs really abound," she said.
"Anti-migrant racism gets mobilized by politicians to divide people and turn people's anger and frustrations on each other, on other workers, instead of on the policies that are responsible for our problems and the politicians that are pushing them."
She said slumping support for immigration also raises safety concerns for newcomers, who are facing potential violence and hostility as a backlash brews.
"Anti-migrant sentiment — it's a useful scapegoat and distraction," she said. "But it has very real-life, material impacts."
cbc.ca
