Trudeau's Liberals are trying to save the Canadian consensus on immigration — and their legacy

Reports about the death of Canada's immigration consensus have arguably been exaggerated. But there are warning signs — both for the public's attitude toward immigration and for the Trudeau government's legacy.

The clearest evidence that the consensus is in some danger can be found in polling conducted by the Environics Institute. For 50 years, Environics has been asking Canadians whether they agree or disagree with the statement that "overall there is too much immigration in Canada."

For nearly 25 years, starting in the late 1990s, a majority of Canadians disagreed with that statement. In 2022, the gap was particularly wide — 69 per cent disagreed, just 27 per cent agreed.

But when Environics asked again in 2023, the numbers had shifted markedly — just 51 per cent disagreed and 44 per cent agreed. And the latest round of polling shows that opinion has fully flipped, with 58 per cent now agreeing that there is too much immigration and just 36 per cent disagreeing.

The concerns underpinning that shift are instructive.

In 2022, 15 per cent of those who told Environics there was too much immigration cited concerns about the availability and cost of housing. By 2023, the share of people citing housing had shot up to 38 per cent (for 2024, it was 33 per cent). Another 21 per cent of those polled who think there is too much immigration now say they think the immigration system is poorly managed by the federal government.

The concern about housing could just as easily be framed as a problem not of too many immigrants but of too few houses. But Environics' findings do a lot to explain why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced on Thursday that the federal government's annual targets for accepting new permanent residents are being significantly curtailed.

"It reflects the fact that we have and we will continue to listen to Canadians," Miller said. 

What the government heard was that, while Canada remains an "open country," many Canadians are concerned about "volume," Miller said.

That same Environics polling offers some support for this more nuanced view of the Canadian consensus. 

While public opinion about the relative level of immigration has changed, 68 per cent of Canadians agree that the economic impact of immigration is positive. That number is 15 points lower than it was in 2022, but still 12 points higher than in 1993. The basic consensus is still holding.

Meanwhile, of those who feel Canada's current level of immigration is too high, just 10 per cent said immigration poses a threat to Canadian values or identity.

The Trudeau Liberals came to office promising to resettle 25,000 refugees from Syria and turn the page on a Conservative government that worried about "barbaric cultural practices" and what people wore to citizenship ceremonies.

Once in office, the Liberals then increased annual immigration, buoyed by advice that more newcomers would offset an aging workforce and strengthen the economy. An embrace of newcomers became central to both the Liberal government's political brand and its economic policy.