Survey Shows Big Disconnect Between Public & Political Class On Immigration Levels
(spencerfernando.com)
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So, the majority want the same or even more immigration. That's kind of the opposite of what Fernando is trying to put across by saying "the plurality of Canadians say the upcoming 2022 immigration target – 411,000 – is too high."
Most voters don't want to reduce immigration. That's the takeaway here for conservatives.
This differs starkly from the 2019 story about "Canadians favour limiting immigration levels" that the PPCers loved to reference as proof that their immigration-lowering policy was popular.
Problem with that one was, "limit immigration" doesn't mean reduce immigration, it just means have limits on immigration as opposed to wide open borders. "Only one billion immigrants will be admitted to Canada every year" is a limit on immigration.
At any rate, now people know why the CPC won't publicly commit to lowering immigration levels. It's a losing issue, and it would be electoral suicide for them to engage with that. That's not to say they can't or won't lower immigration levels. It just means it would be bad strategy to campaign on such a promise (hence the PPC polling at 2%).
I doubt that most Canadians even know how high our immigration levels are, especially compared to other Western countries. It seems like they just ask "are you okay with the current immigration level or do you want more or less". I wonder how this survey would look like if they put some numbers behind.