Recent immigrants to Canada are siding with the Conservatives in their assertion that the country’s current immigration targets are too high.
A Leger poll targeting 2,000 respondents who immigrated to Canada within the last decade found that 42 per cent believe that the Liberals immigration plan will not bring the right number of newcomers to the country. Only 34% believe that the current plan is aiming for the correct figure.
The poll also discovered that 24% of newcomers align themselves with federal Tories, while 22% are more Liberally directed in their political placement. This trend is most commonplace among Chinese immigrants, whose support for Conservatives outpaces the Trudeau government three-to-one.
Some 38% of newcomers do not know which party they align themselves more with.
The poll found that demographically, Quebec residents are much less likely to believe that the current plan will admit too many immigrants (25% vs 45% across all other provinces) while Southeast Asian, Chinese, and South Asian ethnicities (64%, 55%, and 50% respectively) are more likely to believe this will be the case.
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The web survey was conducted from December 14, 2023, and February 16, 2024, with 2,104 newcomers to Canada aged 18 or older, randomly recruited from LEO’s online panel.
Results were weighted by age, gender, region, country of birth, and years since arrival in Canada.
It was weighted to the 2021 Census profile of immigrants in the last 10 years to ensure a representative sample of new Canadians.
A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey, the Leger 360 website explained. For comparison, a probability sample of 2,104 respondents would have a margin of error of ±2.1%, 19 times out of 20.
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Leger vice-president Andrew Enns says that “it sends along a pretty interesting insight in terms of how things might be shifting within ethnic communities, and what people tend to assume and admittedly what we saw over the past couple of elections.”
“The Liberals typically do quite well with the newcomer vote.”
Canada’s 2024-26 Immigration Levels Plan, tabled in Parliament on November 1, 2023, projected stabilized levels in PR resident admission to the country, with targets of 485,000 in 2024; 500,000 in 2025; and 500,000 in 2026.
The plan is in support of economic growth and supporting family reunification, while responding to humanitarian crises and recognizing the rapid growth in immigration in recent years.
