The EKOS poll: Are Canadians getting more racist?

Interesting contrast with annual CIC tracking survey which continues to show stable support for current levels of immigration as per chart below:

Questions of race and religious dress have rarely been ballot box issues in Canada. Now, however, they appear to be the key factors behind major shifts in the voter landscape.

Canada has absorbed a large number of visible minority immigrants over the past twenty years, turning us from a largely white society with ancestry drawn from Britain and France to an extremely heterogeneous one. Initial deep reservations about immigration dropped consistently over that period as we became more diverse. The public embraced the ideal of multiculturalism; dire warnings about ethnic enclaves and a fading national identity never came true. Our research over that period shows national attachment remained very high in Canada, while ethnic identifications actually dropped.

It’s useful to remember how far apart public opinion in Canada and the United States was following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In both countries there was a sharp, immediate rise in opposition to immigration. In Canada, however, that trend soon dissipated, reaching an all-time low around 2005 — when only 25 per cent of us said there were too many immigrants and less than one in five said that too many immigrants were visible-minority. In the U.S., the level of opposition to immigration was nearly three times higher. Canada remained a nation open to the world: pro trade, pro-immigration and pro-diversity. This seemed to confer both social and economic advantages.

Recent polling shows opposition to immigration has nearly doubled since 2005 and is threatening to crack the 53 per cent level we saw in 1993. Not only is opposition to immigration in general scaling heights not seen in twenty years but the number of Canadians saying we admit too many visible minorities has just cracked the 40-point ceiling for the first time ever.

…When we look at how attitudes on immigration and race spread out among the main federal parties, a pattern emerges. Liberals and New Democrats have no cause to be smug; fully one-third of their supporters think too many of those coming to Canada are visible minorities.

But it’s the Conservative party — which owes much of its current success to wooing votes from new Canadians — that seems to have the problem. Jason Kenney, to his credit, wants new Canadians in his party’s corner. But half of the people who support his party would prefer to see fewer non-white immigrants.

Frank Graves of EKOS polling has some startling new numbers