Few Canadians and Quebecers believe that Canada succeeds in integrating its immigrants well, shows a large Léger-The newspaper-VAT on the population’s perception of immigration.
• Read also: Light Survey: Coderre believes he can embody renewal
• Read also: Referendum on sovereignty: no guarantee if the PQ is in the minority
To the question “Is Canada succeeding well or poorly in integrating immigrants into society?”, only 27% of Quebecers said “well”, compared to 24% of Canadians outside Quebec.
On the other hand, a remarkable 59% of Quebecers believe that Canada integrates its immigrants “poorly”. Among Canadians outside Quebec, 49% believe the same, but more than a quarter (27%) of them refused to answer or did not know what to answer.
More or less?
“Should Canada welcome more or fewer immigrants?” Between Quebec and Rest of Canada (ROC), it’s almost the same thing.
Quebecers (8%) and other Canadians (9%) are in the extreme minority who want more immigrants, while around a quarter consider the current thresholds adequate (25% in Quebec and 27% in the ROC).
The segment of the population who believes that Canada should welcome fewer immigrants is much heavier: 61% of Quebecers and 56% of Canadians outside Quebec share this opinion. This includes people who answered “much fewer immigrants”, who make up 25% of Quebec respondents and 30% of Canadians.
- Listen to Joseph Facal’s column via QUB :
A burden on social services and housing
Between failure of integration, negative impacts on public services and benefits for the economy, Léger’s survey paints a rather nuanced portrait of the public’s perception of this issue.
This makes Jean-Marc Léger say that “people do not want an anti-immigrant speech: they want solutions for them”.
An overwhelming majority of Quebecers (79%) and Canadians outside Quebec (78%) agree that “immigration increases the housing shortage”, with a peak of 85% in the Atlantic provinces.
- Listen to the political meeting with Yasmine Abdelfadel and Marc-André Leclerc via QUB :
Many people also see immigration as an additional burden on already strained social services.
59% of Quebecers believe that immigration “increases delays in the health network”, an opinion slightly more widespread in the Rest of Canada (65%), while 52% of Quebecers and 50% of Canadians perceive a negative impact on the education network.
Benefits for the economy
Pollster Jean-Marc Léger notes that “the rest of Canada is more critical of the benefits of immigration than in Quebec.”
In fact, 54% of Quebecers compared to 44% of Canadians see immigration as “a good solution to fight against the aging of the population”.
The gap is widest when it comes to labor shortages: 72% of respondents in Quebec see immigration as a solution to this problem, or 16% more than elsewhere in Canada (56 %).
Views are closer on the economy: 61% of Quebecers see immigration as a “source of economic growth”, compared to 58% of Canadians.
“When we talk about the myth that Quebecers do not want immigrants and that they have a negative perception of them, the answer is no. We are at the same level, if not more open to the positive effects of immigration than compared to the rest of Canada,” analyzes Jean-Marc Léger.
A summit on immigration?
These results are revealed when the Bloc Québécois will propose a motion on Thursday to ask the Trudeau government to convene the provinces to discuss their “respective reception capacity”.
The motion will also ask Ottawa to table, “within 100 days”, a “plan to review federal immigration targets from 2024” which will be based on said reception capacities.
Despite a significant drop in support for immigration across the country, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has maintained the goal of increasing the threshold for permanent immigrants to 500,000 per year by 2025, then that it was at 465,000 for 2023.