Canadian Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Diversity

2026/07/13 1 Comment

Encouraging large scale public opinion research highlighting that concern over immigration levels has largely not affected overall support for diversity and multiculturalism. But support for multiculturalism is less for “deeper” multiculturalism when it involves separate group institutions:

Summary recommendations: When asked what multiculturalism means to them, 64 percent of Canadians provide a response that describes multiculturalism positively, saying, for instance, that it means having an accepting society that welcomes people from different cultures. Only six percent describe multiculturalism negatively. However, 30 percent opt not to provide a response.

  • A majority of Canadians (66%) agree that “multiculturalism has contributed positively to the Canadian identity.” One in four (25%) disagree.
  • Even among white or non-immigrant Canadians, the proportions agreeing that multiculturalism has contributed positively to the Canadian identity outweigh those disagreeing by a margin of roughly two to one.
  • Even among Canadians who currently hold more negative opinions about immigration, a majority (about 3 in 5) has a positive opinion about the impact of multiculturalism.
  • There is widespread agreement among Canadians that people should not be discriminated against based on their race, ethnicity or culture. There is also agreement among a majority of Canadians that there are benefits to living in a diverse society. But disagreement outweighs agreement when it comes to setting up separate institutions in areas such as education to accommodate ethnic or religious minorities. While there are differences in the extent of agreement with each of several statements about diversity among Canadians of different backgrounds, what is notable is that the gradient in opinions just described applies for all groups.
  • One in five Canadians express wholly positive opinions about immigration: they are not concerned about the current number of immigrants coming to Canada, and they see welcoming immigrants as part of their vision of the type of country that Canada should be. A larger group (36%) has mixed views, expressing concern about the number of immigrants currently arriving, but nonetheless agreeing that Canada should be a country that fully welcomes immigrants from around the world. A similarly-sized group – about one in three – expresses wholly negative opinions: they believe immigration levels are too high and do not want Canada to be fully welcoming to immigrants from all over the world. Among non-immigrants, the proportion with wholly negative opinions reaches 41 percent….

Source: Canadian Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Diversity

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Canada’s mosaic is holding strong

2026/07/02 Leave a comment

Encouraging:

…Perhaps the most reassuring finding – appropriate as we mark Canada Day – is that most Canadians, regardless of their race or religion, identify with and feel a sense of belonging to the country. Certainly, some facets of identity are more important to some than to others. Race is more likely to be very important to the sense of identity of Black Canadians, religion to Muslim Canadians, and language to francophones. But these tend to co-exist with, and not compete with, a common sense of being Canadian. Only a handful of Canadians cherish an aspect of their heritage – such as their race or religion – without also identifying with Canada. 

Let’s be clear: No one is suggesting we all agree. There’s plenty for Canadians to argue about, from energy policy, to foreign policy, to challenging moral issues like assisted dying. And thank goodness for that: the whole point of living in a free and democratic society is that we get to shout our dissent from the rooftops. It’s not uniform thinking we’re after at all, but a willingness to work together to find compromises durable enough to get us from today to tomorrow. 

Our disagreements, however, are typically about our opinions, and not who we are: we do not say “yea” or “nay” just by looking at where someone was born, what they look like, or whether they pray every day or, like many Canadians, only during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Our disagreements are within communities, not between them. There are conservatives and liberals among new immigrants, among Quebeckers whose families have been here since the days of New France, and among Albertans working in the oil fields. That’s all part of the mosaic too. 

The beauty is in the arrangement, not the blending. Happy Canada Day.

Source: Canada’s mosaic is holding strong

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Parkin – Freedom vs. equality: Quebec and the rest of Canada

2026/01/16 Leave a comment

More interesting findings:

…Do these differences among provinces and regions matter to our politics? On the one hand, they should not be exaggerated (and we should always resist the urge to stereotype): opinions in every region are fairly divided, with at least two in five in every region favouring each of the two options. Appeals to either freedom or to equality will win support among a significant number of voters, no matter where you are in the country. On the other hand, promises to make Canada the freest country in the world, and attacks on wokeism or policies to advance diversity, equity and inclusion will appeal more in some regions than others – specifically, they will appeal to more voters in the Prairies than in Quebec, and particularly more to men in the Prairies than to women in Quebec. This is as it should be: the point of democratic politics is to offer people choices. But these public opinion data do contribute something to our efforts to understand the way recent elections have played out.

Source: Freedom vs. equality: Quebec and the rest of Canada

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Young Canadians increasingly tie immigration to home affordability problems, survey finds

2025/12/08 Leave a comment

Link to report below to this insightful report. Really good analysis across different aspects:

Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration are the most negative they have been since the early 1990s, driven particularly by young people linking high migrant inflows to the affordability crisis and a housing shortage.

A new report from the Institute for Research on Public Policy, written by University of Toronto researchers, shows just how suddenly and dramatically sentiment toward immigration has changed in recent years. The report is based on 26 surveys produced by the Environics Institute between 1981 and 2024. 

Environics surveys the Canadian public annually on a variety of topics. Recent survey results have particularly stood out because of a pointed negative shift in attitudes toward immigration, after more than two decades of mostly pro-immigration sentiment across the country. This prompted the researchers to conduct a historical analysis of immigration attitudes in Canada to gauge when, previously, Canadians held such negative views. 

“Such drastic changes in public opinion are not common,” wrote Randy Besco and Natasha Goel, political science academics at the University of Toronto. “Public attitudes are usually subject to short-term shifts, only when there are major events or sustained media coverage, and such swings usually reverse quickly,” they said. …

Source: Young Canadians increasingly tie immigration to home affordability problems, survey finds

Report: Who Changed Their Minds? Two Shifts in Canadian Public Opinion on Immigration: 1995-2005 and 2023-24

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Parkin: Spot the backlash [DEI]

2025/11/12 Leave a comment

More interesting analysis that bucks some of the commentary:

…But maybe we’re not looking closely enough. Thanks to the support of our survey partners at the Diversity Institute and the Future Skills Centre, the survey sample allows us to narrow the focus. Follow along in the chart below, which starts with the responses for employed adults in general, but then zeroes in on gender, racial identity, sexual orientation and age.2

Can you see the backlash taking shape? No, me neither.

Certainly, opinions are influenced by age. Older people are less likely to say that they’ve been positively affected by DEI policies (this holds true for older people in general, not just older white men). But opinions mostly shift to the neutral position (no impact). The proportion of white, heterosexual men age 50 and older who say their own opportunities have suffered as a result of DEI is only five percentage points higher than the average.

Source: Spot the backlash

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Parkin: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”

2025/10/28 Leave a comment

More interesting analysis by Parkin and Environics, written in response to the Globe editorial. Main takeaway, problem appears to be more on the Alberta side in terms of resentment:

The Globe and Mail published a special editorial this Sunday on the alliance between the Quebec and Alberta governments in support of greater respect and autonomy for their provinces. You can read it here. 

I am going to weigh in. What’s the point of having a Substack if you can’t drop everything you had planned for the morning in order to share some charts?

The editorial, on the whole, is not wrong. Quebecers and Albertans share many frustrations. Our survey confirms they are the two provinces where support for more provincial powers is highest. But there are two specific nuances that are worth noting, since they arguably constrain the prospects for any Quebec-Alberta “rebel alliance.”

The first is one of the findings that jumped out early on in the Confederation of Tomorrow survey project. Quebecers who are critical of federalism are more likely than those who are not to support an asymmetrical distribution of powers (the option in the survey is: “the federal government should offer more powers to those provinces that want them, so that the federal system can respond to the different needs that some provinces may have”). But this is not the case in Alberta, where more insist on the equality of provinces: there is no greater openness to asymmetry among disgruntled Albertans. While many Quebecers and Albertans will find common ground in feeling disrespected within Canada, their solutions are not the same: the asymmetry that represents a step forward for autonomist Quebecers actually represents a step backwards for autonomist Albertans….

The second finding comes from a question added to the survey more recently, about the perceived contribution that the people in each of the country’s major regions make to Canada.

Relatively few Quebecers (12% overall) say that western Canadians contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and the proportion that holds this view is only slightly higher (16%) among Quebecers who don’t feel their province is treated with respect. 

Far more Albertans (54%) say that Quebecers contribute less than their fair share to Canada, and this rises to a striking 81 percent among Albertans who don’t feel their province is treated with respect….

In short, whatever it is that annoys some Quebecers about federalism, it’s not their sense of what’s going on in the west. But one of the things that annoys some Albertans about federalism is precisely their sense of what’s going on in Quebec.

Resentment of Quebec (among other things) continues to fuel western alienation. The potential for a meaningful Quebec-Alberta alliance that leads us to a reformed federation, along the lines discussed in The Globe and Mail’s editorial, will be limited until Albertan leaders try to address and even defuse that resentment. 

Source: The limited prospects for a “rebel alliance”

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Focus Canada: More than half of Canadians think there is too much immigration, poll finds

2025/10/17 Leave a comment

The good news is that for most questions, the decline in support has largely bottomed out. Encouraging that concerns revolve more around immigration program mismanagement and impact on housing, healthcare etc rather than values albeit latter along with refugees and crime remain issues. Partisan differences have increased significantly, likely reflecting Conservative highlighting immigration and citizenship issues and possible influence of USA debates:

A majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration to this country, a new poll suggests, but the percentage of people who believe this has remained stable after a sharp rise over two previous years.

The poll, which was conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research in partnership with other groups, also found a widening partisan divide among respondents. Supporters of the federal Conservatives are much more likely to be critical of immigration levels compared with people who support the Liberals or New Democrats.

The survey interviewed 2,004 Canadians via telephone (landline and cellphone) between Sept. 8 and 21. The margin of error for this sample size is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The survey has been conducted over decades using broad questions to track Canadians’ feelings about immigration.

Fifty-six per cent of respondents said they agreed with the statement, “Overall, there is too much immigration to Canada,” while 38 per cent said they disagreed with it. …

Source: More than half of Canadians think there is too much immigration, poll finds

Survey link: Canadian public opinion about the Immigration & Refugees

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‘Elbows up’: Canadian public opinion of the U.S. hits a new low after Donald Trump’s election

2025/06/10 Leave a comment

Not a surprise:

Canadian public sentiment towards the United States has plummeted to new depths, a new report suggests, revealing how decades of Canadian goodwill toward its southern neighbour have reversed mere months after President Donald Trump took office.

The survey, conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, also found the vast majority of respondents were strongly opposed to Canada becoming the 51st state.

“It’s really the worst collective opinions of the U.S. that we have recorded” in the more than 40 years the institute has been keeping track, said Keith Neuman, a senior associate at the Environics Institute for Survey Research. “By more than a two-to-one margin, Canadians’ opinions are negative rather than positive.”

It’s the result of what some experts call a “visceral reaction” toward Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats.

“The unfavourable feelings are much stronger this time, and much more intense,” said Adam Chapnick, a Canadian foreign policy analyst and professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.

“It’s being reflected in Canadians not travelling to the United States, not purchasing products that are made in the United States and becoming more serious about making hard decisions domestically to improve our productivity and competitiveness in the world.”

Canadian public perception of the U.S. hits new low 

The survey, conducted in mid-May, found 65 per cent of respondents held an “unfavourable” opinion of the U.S., while just  29 per cent had a “favourable” opinion.

That’s a dramatic shift from last fall, when public sentiment toward the U.S. was divided roughly 50-50.

The closest Canadians have come to a similar unfavourability rating was in 2020, during the tail end of Trump’s first administration. At the time, 63 per cent of Canadians felt unfavourable to the U.S.

“In Trump’s first term, it took several years for Canadian public opinion to deteriorate to the same point,” Neuman noted. “The impact on Canadian public opinion has been much quicker this time … there’s not only the history, but he’s been much more aggressive and assertive with policies much quicker this time around.”

A majority of Conservative voters — 57 per cent — still viewed the U.S. favourably, down six points from last fall. In contrast, more than 80 per cent of Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and NDP voters had an unfavourable opinion of the States.

Overall, 78 per cent of Canadians disapproved of Trump’s handling of the U.S. presidency, a figure that matched 2018. Trump was most popular among Conservative voters, 30 per cent of whom approved of his performance.

Canadians can still recover their positive relationship with the States “if we can turn things around in a reasonable period of time,” Chapnick said, referencing Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty.

“I think that the long-term positive relationship is quite resilient,” he said. “Geography makes us more resilient. Family ties add to that. I think that, should things get back to some sort of new normal, there should be an ability for us to bounce back to a reasonable degree.”

Large majority of Canadians strongly against becoming the 51st state

Canadians have taken an “elbows up” response to Trump’s threats against Canadian sovereignty, Neuman said.

Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they “strongly disagree” that Canada and the U.S. should unite into one country, while just seven per cent said a merger should happen.

That’s a stronger sentiment than when the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) — the precursor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — was negotiated in 1986, stoking fears of an economic and cultural merger between the two nations. Back then, just 63 per cent of Canadians were strongly against Canada and the U.S. uniting.

Shortly after the CUSFTA was implemented in the late-1980s, an Environics poll found 30 per cent of Canadians felt it was “very likely” that Canada will remain independent from the U.S. over the next decade. Today, that figure has jumped to 70 per cent.

“That, in some ways, is maybe the most surprising or notable finding,” Neuman said. “It’s not evident that we should be seeing that strong a level of confidence right now, given the uncertainty with tariffs and the uncertainty about Trump … We have not been threatened as a country like this since before we became a country.”

But Chapnick wasn’t surprised, noting that Canadians grew more confident in their nation’s sovereignty after worries of annexation during CUSFTA negotiations didn’t come to pass….

Source: ‘Elbows up’: Canadian public opinion of the U.S. hits a new low after Donald Trump’s election

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What are Canadians’ perceptions on race relations? Here’s what a national survey found

2025/03/15 Leave a comment

Always useful to have tracking over time. Encouraing:

Canadians are more optimistic about race relations than they were three years ago, despite a world that’s increasingly defined by inter-group conflict and social divisiveness, says a national survey on racism, race relations and discrimination.

The survey shows that those who view race relations as generally good outnumber those who think otherwise by a three-to-one ratio — with many believing that people from different groups get along with one another and have equal opportunity to succeed, said the report by Environics Institute and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

The 2024 survey found that most Canadians acknowledge the reality of racism, prejudice and hate, recognizing these issues both from personal experience and through their understanding of broader societal trends.

Keith Neuman, senior associate at Environics and the report’s lead author, said that compared to racialized people surveyed in 2021, the experiences of those surveyed this time didn’t worsen, and their perceptions of race relations improved slightly. “That, I think, is a point of optimism,” he said.

The survey comes at a time when Canada’s immigration policy is at a crossroads, with anti-immigrant sentiment rising, most recently directed at South Asians here as international students and foreign workers, scapegoated for the housing crisis and socioeconomic challenges. The ongoing war between Hamas and Israel has also led to tensions in Canada. 

This was the third wave of a national survey that started in 2019 to monitor the attitudes, perceptions and experiences of race relations among Canadians. The second survey in 2021 was in the wake of the racial reckoning from the Black Lives Matter Movement and surge of anti-Asian racism amid the pandemic….

Source: What are Canadians’ perceptions on race relations? Here’s what a national survey found

Filed under Multiculturalism, Polling, Racism Tagged with ,

Clear majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration, new poll suggests

2024/10/19 Leave a comment

Clear continuing signs of an inflection point in attitudes, reflecting overly high levels of permanent residents and out of control temporary (students, foreign workers) along with impact on housing availability and affordability.

Recent reversals will take time to work through the system meaning that public opinion unlikely to revert to pre-2022 levels. Clear policy failure on the part of the federal government, along with provincial governments and advocates/lobbyists for high levels.

Reversion to 1990 attitudes or worse as per the summary charts below:

…..Keith Neuman, a senior associate with the Environics Institute, says his organization has consistently found a consensus that immigration was either positive for Canada or not a problem.

But he said Canadians have been growing more concerned about the volume of immigrants. “There are worries and concerns about immigration that we simply didn’t see two years ago to the same extent,” he said in an interview.

However, he said Canadians are not rejecting immigration entirely. “People still value the diversity. They still recognize the economic benefits. They understand that jobs need to be filled. Those things are still part of the general sentiment of the population for most people.

“But there are increasing concerns with how the system is being managed and the number of people coming.”

Among the findings of the researchers is a 10-point increase, to 21 per cent, in those who believe there is too much immigration because it is being poorly managed by government….

Source: Clear majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration, new poll suggests,

Clear majority of Canadians now say there’s too much immigration,



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