A majority of Canadians believe the Trudeau government’s plan to increase immigration targets to 500,000 immigrants a year will have a negative impact on the cost of housing.
The Nanos Research poll commissioned by Bloomberg News revealed that a total of 68% of Canadians surveyed said they believe increased immigration targets will either negatively impact or somewhat negatively impact the cost of housing.
Twenty percent believe more immigrants will have a positive impact or somewhat positive impact, 7% believe it will have no impact and 5% are unsure.
SCREENSHOT: nanos.co
Skepticism of Trudeau’s increased immigration targets is at its highest in the Prairies (70.1%), followed by Quebec (69%), and Ontario (68.1%). Skepticism is also higher among men (70.1%) than women (65.7%), and at its highest among those aged 25-54 (74.5%).
Support for mass immigration is down from a previous Bloomberg-Nanos poll conducted five months ago, which saw 52% of Canadians saying they support the new immigration targets.
The poll also saw most Canadians say the Trudeau government’s spending and budget deficit policies is the leading cause of an increased cost of living.
Thirty percent said Liberal spending and deficit policies are to blame for higher prices, while 22% blamed businesses increasing their prices, 17% blamed pandemic related supply chain disruption, 10% blamed the Bank of Canada’s interest rate hikes and 8% blamed the Russia-Ukrainian war.
SCREENSHOT: nanos.co
As previously reported by True North, calculations by Bloomberg based on Statistics Canada data and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that for each newly constructed unit of housing, 4 to 5 immigrants arrived in Canada over the past year.
Canada’s population also grew by a record 1 million people in 2022, mostly spurred by immigration.
Despite pressure on the housing market, newly appointed Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the Liberal government would keep its current half a million annual target and might even consider raising it in the near future.
“I don’t see a world in which we lower it, the need is too great … Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at. But certainly, I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”
In June 2023, the average Canadian home cost $709,218, with that number rising to $1,182,120 in Toronto and $1,271,728 in Vancouver.
The Nanos poll surveyed 1,081 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between July 30th to August 3rd, 2023. The margin of error for this survey is ±3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
With files from True North’s Cosmin Dzsurdzsa.
