＜基調報告＞

Politics, Immigration and Diversity in Canada:
An Address to the Japanese Association
for Canadian Studies
Keith Banting
Canada is often seen as an exceptional country, with robust immigration andmulticultural programs. In an era in which many countries have been closing theirborders, Canada is increasing its annual immigration targets. While other countries
cope with populist movements that mobilize fears that immigration erodes historiccultures, Canada still embraces a national identity that celebrates diversity. How
can we explain Canadian support for immigration?
A traditional approach to explaining Canadian support for immigration
combines geography, culture and policy. First, Canada has fortunate geography,
with oceans on three borders and a country of immigration to the south, which
absorbs population movements from the southern hemisphere. As a result, unlike
the United States and Europe, Canada has not had to cope with heavy flows of
undocumented immigrants crossing its borders. The public has the sense that
immigration is a managed process under firm government control. The second
part of the traditional story focuses on Canadian culture and identity, which havelong celebrated ethnic pluralism as a defining feature of the country. This cultural
inheritance, the traditional argument insists, contributes to greater acceptance ofthe ethnic diversity that immigration brings. The final part of the story highlights
two key government policies adopted early in the modern era of immigration. The
implementation of the points-system in 1967 has encouraged Canadians to believethat immigrants contribute to the strength of the economy. Then the policy ofmulticulturalism, first articulated first in 1971, has reinforced diversity as a key
feature of Canadian life. Fortunate geography, a diverse culture, and strategic
policies: these are the factors normally considered central to Canadian attitudes to– 39 –

immigration.
This standard story is undoubtedly important. However, it does not fully explainchanges in attitudes towards immigration in recent decades. As we shall see,attitudes towards immigration changed dramatically in the 1990s and the 2000s
in two ways: the first was a dramatic transformation in the level of overall support
for immigration in the 1990s and early 2000s; and the second was a polarization of
attitudes towards immigration among political parties in the years since 2006. To
understand these developments, we need to dig deeper.
In this talk, I try to throw light on these two changes. In Section I, I look at the
big shift in public support for immigration in the 1990s and early 2000s, and examine
the factors driving change. In Section 2, I track the growing political polarizationin support for immigration, and examine its impact of government policies. In both
sections, I draw on recent work with my co-author, Stuart Soroka, who is equally
responsible for the findings and messages that I present.(1)Section 1: The Transformation of Support for Immigration
Canadians have not always been highly supportive of immigration. Historians
have demonstrated dark episodes in the first half of the twentieth century, whenracism and intolerance marked too many immigration policies. However, lessattention has focused on recent changes in our more recent history. To track changes
in public attitudes towards immigration between the early 1980s and 2019, we
draw on data from a series of surveys conducted by the Environics Institute, whichcontains a wealth of data on Canadian attitudes towards immigration.
I start with Figure 1, which tracks whether respondents agreed that“Overall,there is too much immigration to Canada. ”As the figure makes clear, theoverwhelming bulk of Canadians agreed with this proposition in the 1980s andearly 1990s. This was hardly a welcoming environment. However, public attitudes
then shifted abruptly. Beginning in the mid-1990s, support for immigration rose
dramatically, and by the early 2000s, public opinion had completely flipped. By
then, two-thirds of Canadians disagreed that immigration levels were too high. This
was a remarkable change in a short period.

– 40 –

Figure 1 Support for immigration levels, 1981-2019

Proportion Respondents

1.0

0.8
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0.4

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Supportive
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Not Supportive

0.2

0.0

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

The traditional story about Canada and immigration cannot explain
this dramatic change. After all, secure borders, the points system and themulticulturalism policy were all in place during the years when most Canadiansrejected existing levels of immigration, and they remained in place through theperiod of change. It is possible, of course, that Canadian culture was changing in
the 1990s, but cultures tend to change slowly and it seems difficult to explain sucha rapid attitudinal shift by reference to culture alone. Other factors must have also
been at work.
To search for other possible factors, we turned to the comparative literature on
immigration, on the intuition that Canadian attitudes may be inﬂuenced by factors
also at work in other countries. The first factor that emerges from this search isthe speed of change in the level of immigration. There appears to be no specificlevel of immigration that triggers public backlash. Countries with long historiesof immigration, including Canada, seem to be able to sustain quite high levels of
immigration without political difficulty. However, rapid increases in immigration
can be politically sensitive, as we saw in Europe after the 2015 surge in refugees
displaced by the war in Syria. Perhaps this is the case in Canada as well. Table 2A,
which tracks the annual intake of permanent residents between 1980 and 2019,provides some initial evidence. The immigration program expanded rapidly in the– 41 –

1980s and early 1990s, rising from an annual intake of 100,000 in the early 1980s
to more than 250,000 a decade later. Throughout this period, Canadians thought
immigration levels were too high, as we saw in Figure 1. In the mid-1990s, however,
the government slammed the brakes on growth, and the immigration program
stabilized at about 250,000, remaining close to that level for over two decades. In
this period of stability, support for immigration grew strongly. The speed of change
seems to matter.
Figure 2. Potential Drivers of Immigration Support, 1985-2019
B. Unemployment Rate

300

14

Unemployment Rate

Permanent Residents (1000s)

A. Immigration to Canada

200

100

0

10
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1985

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1995

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1980

C. Immigration and the Economy

1985

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2010

2015

2020

D. Immigration and Canadian Values
0.80

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0.75

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0.70

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Mean Agreement (0−1)

0.80

Mean Agreement (0−1)

12

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0.65
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0.60
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0.55
0.50

0.75
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0.70
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0.65

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0.55

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0.50

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

The comparative literature also spotlights the strength of the economy. Popular
views of the state of the economy condition attitudes toward immigration, withsupport for immigration rising and falling with the business cycle and falling
particularly sharply during economic crises. Figure 2B hints at the relevance of
this factor in Canada. The unemployment rate was higher and more volatile in the– 42 –

1980s and early 1990s, but declined steadily during the mid-to-late 1990s, reachinga much lower and more stable level after 2000. Canadians' support for immigration
seems to have tracked the business cycle quite closely during the 1980s and 1990s,
and then rose steadily as unemployment fell and stabilized in the new century. The
economy seems to matter.
The impact of the economy is magnified in Canada by a distinct twist. Although
the points system dates from 1967, it did not matter much because the stream of
economic immigrants admitted under its terms remained small, with the family
reunification stream being by far the largest category until the 1990s. At thatcritical juncture, the government changed track, squeezing the family reunification
stream hard and expanding the economic class dramatically. In effect, Canada
turned immigration into a truly economic program for the first time and, as Figure
2C indicates, Canadians' belief that immigration is good for the economy rose
sharply in the years that followed.
Cultural factors also feature prominently in the comparative literature.
Multiple studies demonstrate that the populist backlash, which has transformed
democratic politics in many countries, has been fueled by a fear that immigrationis undermining the culture and identity of the receiving country. Despite ourcelebration of multiculturalism, cultural anxiety matter in Canada as well. Figure
2D tracks responses to the statement“Too many immigrations are not adopting
Canadian values.” (Note that to ensure consistency with the other measures in thistalk, we measure disagreement with the statement, so that a high score is the proimmigration position, that is, low anxiety about cultural effects). The figure showsa slow decline in the level of cultural anxiety during the 2000s, during the years
when support for overall immigration was rising. However, this did not represent a
permanent shift in Canadian culture, as the anxiety rises again between 2007 and2015 and then decreases again thereafter. The level of cultural anxiety seems to
track shifts in the politics of the country.
Finally, the comparative literature on immigration points to the importanceof political partisanship in shaping the attitudes of voters, with supporters of left
and centrist parties more supportive of immigration and supporters of conservative
parties and especially far-right parties more opposed. I return to the role of politics
in more depth in Section 2.
In summary, we have a host of possible factors that may explain shifts in public– 43 –

attitudes towards immigration in Canada: change in the level of immigration, thestrength of the economy, faith in the economic benefits of immigration, fears that
immigrants undermine Canadian values, and the political partisanship of voters.
Elsewhere, Stuart Soroka and I conduct a multiple regression analysis to estimate
the relative importance of these factors in shaping the views of Canadians. I provide
a succinct summary our findings here, and refer those interested in the full analysis
to Banting and Soroka (2020).
First, our findings give greater weight to change in the level of immigrationand economic factors than does most commentary. Indeed, we can account for agood portion of over-time change in support for immigration with a combination ofchange in immigration and unemployment. The surge in support for immigrationin the 1990s and early 2000s in part reflected a new stability in the level ofimmigration after a period of rapid increases, coupled with a lower and more stablelevel of unemployment, after years alternating recessions and growth. Stability inboth mattered.
Second, we found that culture anxiety matters in Canada as it does in othercountries. A worry that immigrants do not adopt Canadian values is negatively
associated with respondents' support for immigration in the Environics surveys.
Critically, however, we find that the effects of cultural anxiety appear to be
counterbalanced almost exactly by belief that immigration is good for the economy.
This is critical in the analysis. Indeed, the way in which faith in the economic
benefits of immigration offsets the effects of cultural anxiety may well be one of thetruly distinctive features of the Canadian story of immigration.
Finally, political partisanship plays an intriguing role. The partisan preferencesof Canadians had little effect in the explaining he large shift in attitudes during the
1990s and early 2000s. However, partisanship became more important in the years
after 2004, with partisans of the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party (NDP)
becoming more supportive of immigration and Conservative voters becoming less so.
Indeed, in statistical terms, the impact of supporting the Conservative party morethan triples from the pre- to post-2004 periods. I turn to this tantalizing finding
about political partisanship and polarization in the next section.
To summarize our progress so far, the traditional story about Canadians andimmigration needs to be adapted in several ways. First, high levels of support are
actually a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the early 1990s, the great mass of– 44 –

Canadians thought immigration levels were too high, and understanding the great
shift in opinion in the 1990s and early 2000s is critical. Second, the explanation of
the factors shaping Canadian attitudes needs to include a wider range of factors
than have traditionally featured in commentary. Finally, if one is searching for aparticularly distinctive feature of the Canadian case, one obvious candidate is theway in which faith in the economic benefits of immigration counterbalances thecultural anxieties it brings in its wake.

Section II. Political parties and immigration
The image of strong support for immigration tends to obscure a growing
polarization in our politics over the issue. This polarization is evident at two levels:
a fraying of the historic consensus among political parties on the fundamentals of
immigration and diversity policy; and a striking polarization in the attitudes of thevoters who support each of the major political parties in the country.
This polarization represented a departure from the past. Throughout much of
the postwar period, there was a multiparty consensus on the basic lines of a liberalimmigration policy. This multiparty consensus underpinned the passage of the 1976
Immigration Act, which codified the basic elements of the country's immigration
system. Consensus persisted through the Progressive Conservative government led
by Brian Mulroney, which embedded the multiculturalism policy in legislation in1988 and steadily increased immigration levels during the economic turbulence ofthe early 1990s, breaking with the traditional reﬂex of cutting admissions during
recessions.
The fraying of this all-party consensus began with the breakthrough of the
populist Reform Party in the 1993 election. Reform was a right-wing populist party,
which injected a potent strain of social conservativism into Canadian politics. The
new party was critical of the size and racial composition of the immigration ﬂow,
criticizing immigration policy for changing the ethnic makeup of Canada (Laycock2012). To block this trend, the party promised to lower the level of immigrationand deny health and social benefits to all immigrants before they became citizens(Flanagan 1995: 197-198). The Reform party did not last long as a separate
entity, as it was absorbed in a restructured Conservative Party in the early 2000s.

– 45 –

However, its attitudes to immigration and diversity did not disappear. Rather,
Reform's social conservativism flowed into the new Conservative Party, mixing
with the more traditional neoliberalism in the ideological complexion of the party.
Although social conservatism has never fully dominated the party, the legacy of
Reform is present at all levels of the organization. At the grass-roots level, former
Reform supporters became part of the Conservative base. At the level of party elites,
social conservatives have been represented among the party's elected MPs, andhave been an important block of votes in successive party leadership contests.
This restructuring on the right precipitated a period of greater polarization inapproaches to immigration and diversity at both the level of voters and the level ofsuccessive governments. I start with the polarization among voters and then moveto polarization between parties in governments.
Party supporters: Polarization among voters is captured in Figures 3. The rightpanel of Figure 3 tracks a growing partisan gap in support for immigration levels
in Canada. There were few real differences among voters for the major parties
until the mid-2000s. At point, support among Liberal and NDP partisans continued
to grow, while support among Conservative partisans began to decline. By 2019,
Liberals' support for immigration is almost twice as high as it was in the early
1980s; Conservative support, in contrast, has returned closer to its level at thattime. The gap between Liberals and Conservatives in 2019 is striking.
Figure 3. Support for Immigration– 46 –

This polarization in support for overall levels of immigration is paralleledby changes in the attitudes I emphasized earlier: belief that immigration helps
the economy, and anxiety about whether immigrants adopt Canadian values.
Beginning in the mid-2000s, faith in the economic benefits of immigration became
stronger among Liberal and NDP voters and weaker among Conservative voters.
Polarization was even more dramatic in the case of cultural anxiety. Beginningaround 2005, fears that immigrants do not adopt Canadian values increases sharply
among Conservative voters, but declines among Liberal and NDP voters, with aparticularly sharp decline after 2015. The polarization between the two largest
political parties was greatest on this measure. (See Banting and Soroka forthcoming
for details).
The cumulative pattern is clear. From 2005 onwards, Conservative party
voters become less supportive of immigration levels, less inclined to see economic
benefits to immigration, and more inclined to express concerns about the impactthat immigrants may have on Canadian culture. Liberal and NDP electorates
have become markedly more supportive of immigration on all three measures. The
electoral bases of the major parties have moved apart.
Political parties and government: The weakening of consensus over immigrationis also apparent between political parties, as demonstrated by the orientation of theConservative government of Stephen Harper, which governed from 2006 to 2015
and the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, which came to power in 2015.
When the Conservatives came to power, the government faced a complex set ofpolitical imperatives on the immigration file. On one side, they needed to expand
their political base. The entire rationale for the new Conservative Party was tobecome the dominant governing party, and the party therefore needed to appeal
to a broad spectrum of voters across the country. Given the size of immigrantcommunities in Canada, especially in major urban conurbations such as Vancouver
and Toronto, the drive to expand the party's electoral base required appealing
to immigrant voters. Yet, the party also needed to retain the commitment andenthusiasm of the social conservatives in their electoral base, which was becoming
more critical of immigration, as we have just seen. This strategic necessity toappeal simultaneously to immigrants and social conservatives has been called the“populist's paradox”in Canada (Marwash et al. 2013; also Triadafilopoulos andTaylor 2020).

– 47 –

Constructing a response to these conflicting imperatives required a tricky
balancing act. The government's strategy emerged along three tracks, which were
inevitably in tension with each other. On the first track, reflecting the neoliberalstrain in the party's ideology, the Harper government sought to define immigration
generally in economic terms. They maintained the existing immigration levels,and retained the high priority awarded to education and skills in admission
decisions. Over time, this economic approach increasingly took on a pro-businessform. Beginning in 2010, the government made an existing offer of employment an
important consideration in admission decisions (Alboim and Cohl 2012).
On the second track, the Conservatives worked hard to attract the votesof immigrants. The party assumed they could appeal to socially and fiscallyconservative members of minority communities by emphasizing neoliberal themes
and their resistance to social issues such as same-sex marriage. This strategy gained
momentum with the appointment of Jason Kenney as Minister for Immigration,
Citizenship and Multiculturalism. Kenney's outreach campaign included ministerial
participation in countless community events, strategic mailings, and the creationof large databases of minority voters. In addition, the Conservatives significantly
increased funding for integration programming, especially language training, which
had the coincidental political benefit of generating more ministerial announcementsof financial support at community events (Griffith 2013).
On the third track, however, the Harper government used cultural policies
to provide reassurance to social conservatives. Refugees were a favourite target.
Conservative speeches repeatedly emphasized security, control and fraud,promising to root out “cheaters”, “queue-jumpers” and “terrorists”, and in 2012, thegovernment passed the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. Conservatives also
reduced federal health benefits provided to refugees in their first year. The strategy
spread to the fields of diversity and citizenship, as the government sought toredefine Canadian identity around conservative themes. Their 2009 revisions to thecitizenship guide, which is used by immigrants preparing for the citizenship test,
downplayed multiculturalism in favour of the history of Canada's military triumphs
and its legacy of British institutions and traditions (Citizenship and Immigration
Canada 2009). Further, the Conservatives questioned the loyalty of dual citizens,and toughened standards in the citizenship test, driving down the success rate,
especially among immigrants with low family income, low proficiency in official– 48 –

languages, and low educational levels (Feng and Picot 2020). The government
also repeatedly criticized Muslims, the least popular minority in the country. They
symbolically denounced“barbaric cultural practices”in the revised citizenshipguide and countless ministerial speeches, and in 2011, they announced that thosewishing to become Canadian citizens would have to uncover their face during thecitizenship oath. In 2015, the government legislated on a range of its complaints in
the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.
This complicated juggling act of appealing simultaneously to the mainstream, toimmigrant voters and to social conservatives fell apart during the election campaign
of 2015. The pre-campaign period was marked by the Syrian refugee crisis, with theConservative government adopting a historically cautious policy of admitting only
10,000 refugees. During the election campaign itself, the Conservatives turned totheir anti-Muslim position, campaigning hard against the niqab. They promised a“barbaric cultural practices”tip line on which Canadians would be encouraged to

inform on their neighbors, and proposed to ban the niqab not only during the oathof citizenship but also for employees in the civil service (Kymlicka forthcoming).
These measures proved a step too far, and generated a backlash. Support for theConservatives dropped in the last weeks of the campaign, and the Liberals won theelection. Later, the former Conservative immigration minister admitted that theiremphasis on“barbaric cultural practices”made many immigrants, including nonMuslims, nervous.“It's why we lost…we allowed ourselves to be portrayed in thelast election as unwelcoming. That was a huge mistake.”(CTV News 2016).
The Liberal party that took power in 2015 faced less contradictory pressureson the immigration file. As the party that introduced the points system in 1967
and the multiculturalism program in 1971, Liberals have a history of support for
immigration and diversity. Moreover, for decades, immigrant voters had identified
strongly with the Liberal party, contributing to the political dominance of the party
during the 20th century. Given the Harper government's efforts to eat into that base,the Liberals had every incentive to remain attentive to immigrant communities.
Finally, this long-standing tradition was aligned with the party's electoral base.
As we have seen, Liberal voters were becoming even more strongly committed
to immigration and less worried about cultural diversity. As a result, the Liberal
government did not have to cope with internal contradictions. Indeed, given the
problems the Conservatives had with the issue in the 2015 election, the new– 49 –

government had an electoral incentive to expand the immigration envelope.
This expansion emerged quickly. The new government immediately raised thetarget intake of Syrian refugees from 10,000 to 25,000, with the Prime Minister
meeting the first arrivals at the airport. The government also reversed a numberof the most symbolic parts of the Conservatives' cultural policies. However, thenature and limits of the government's openness became clear in its approach toimmigration levels on one hand and asylum seekers on the other.
The Liberals adopted an ambitious policy on immigration levels. A numberof advocacy and business groups urged the federal government to increase
immigration levels dramatically, including the government's own Advisory Council
on Economic Growth, which recommended an increase of the annual intake fromthe long-standing level of about 270,000 to 450,000 admissions by 2021, an increaseof approximately 65 per cent (Advisory Council 2016). The Liberals did not go that
far, but they did embark on a steady expansionist path, with a multi-year plan
to increase admission targets to 350,000 by 2021, a 30 per cent increase over theactual intake in 2015.(2)The limits of the Liberal government's openness became clear when one pillarof the traditional foundation of immigration policy – secure borders – seemedchallenged. Canadian governments have always responded to apparent breeches
in the borders, and the Liberal government remained faithful to this tradition.
Beginning in 2017, a growing number of asylum-seekers, who feared the directionof US policies under the Trump administration, began to walk across the borderin open fields, immediately requesting asylum when taken into custody. The
numbers were not large, but they triggered an intense political debate. Once again,
supporters of the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition reacted
very differently, and in Parliament, the Conservative opposition hammered thegovernment over what they described as a‘ crisis ’at the border. The Liberal
government responded. They provided increased funding to the provinces having tocope with the costs of settling the asylum-seekers, but also introduced legislative
amendments that further restricted access for asylum seekers. It was a reminderthat even with a sympathetic government, public support for immigration depends
on a sense of secure borders. Clearly, the standard story remain important, even if
it does not tell the entire story of Canadian immigration.

– 50 –

Conclusions
Clearly, the image of Canada as a long-standing bastion of support for
immigration needs to be refined. Strong public support for immigration is arelatively recent phenomenon, the product of a major shift in public attitudes that
occurred in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, the image of a steadfast
Canada obscures a polarization of opinion along partisan lines among voters andpolitical parties. Canada is a more complex place than it sometimes appears fromafar.
On its own, the standard story about Canadian support for immigration cannot
explain these patterns. The key elements of the story – secure borders, a diverse
culture, and strategic policy choices in the postwar era – remain relevant, as we
saw in the response to irregular asylum seekers. Nevertheless, the standard story
needs to be expanded to include other factors: surges in immigration numbers,
the strength of the economy, public faith that immigration benefits the economy,
cultural anxiety among the majority population, and political polarization. When
this wider set of factors comes into view, perhaps the most distinctive feature of
Canada is the way in which public faith in the economic benefits of immigration
offsets the cultural anxiety that is so toxic in many other countries.
It is fair to ask how our interpretation squares with recent increase in the levelof immigration under the Liberal government. Assuming Canadians reacted in
the same way they did in the past, our analysis would suggests that a significant
increase in immigration levels would lead to a softening of public support for
immigration. This did not happen. The Liberals' increase in the intake did trigger
pushback at the level of elite politics. In 2018, the newly elected Quebec government
chose to reduce total immigration into that province, moving back to pre-2015
levels. Anxiety about whether immigrants adopt Canadian values was an issue in
the Conservative leadership contest to choose Mr. Harper's successor. In addition,
the 2019 federal election featured the arrival of a new political party, the People's
Party of Canada, which also advocated a sharp reduction in immigration levels.
Nevertheless, the federal government's increase in immigration levels did not leadto a major softening of public support for immigration. How can we explain this?
Given the importance of the unemployment rate in our analysis, it appears that thecontinued decline in the rate of unemployment to near historic lows between 2015

– 51 –

and 2019 mitigated the effects of the increase in admission numbers. In effect, thestrength of the economy provided the government with greater political room formanoeuver when dealing with the immigration file. In this context, it was perhaps
not surprising that the new People's Party of Canada received only 1.6 per cent of
the popular vote nationwide.
More research is required to explain the polarization among voters and politicalparties since 2006. Elsewhere, political backlash has been rooted in a lethal
combination of economic and cultural insecurity. Globalization, technological change,
the spread of precarious work and growing inequality have generated considerable
economic anxiety, especially among those on the margins of the labour force, andhave led to widespread scapegoating of immigrants. Such economic insecurity
has combined with cultural insecurity driven by fears that historic cultures andidentities are threatened (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). Canada is not immune fromthese pressures, and they may be relevant to the decline in Conservatives' comfort
with diversity. However, such factors cannot explain the other side of polarization,
the steady growth in support among Liberal and NDP partisans. A future research
agenda awaits.
It is also difficult to untangle the extent to which polarization was a top-down
or bottom-up process. Was polarization among voters actually the result of greater
conflict between party elites, with sharper conflicts between parties shaping theviews of their supporters and attracting like-minded voters who had previously
supported other parties? Alternatively, was polarization a bottom up process, inwhich party leaders changed their immigration policies in order to keep up with
their partisan supporters whose attitudes were shifting for other reasons? Most
likely, both processes were involved, although we have argued elsewhere that in thecase of the Harper government's diversity policies, the party leadership was trying
to catch up with movement in its base rather than leading the charge (Banting andSoroka, forthcoming).
Our findings have implications for future policy debates. Most importantly,
we should not assume that public support for immigration is simply baked into
Canadian culture. The challenge of sustaining public support for immigration rests
not only with the ministers responsible for immigration and multiculturalism but
also with ministers of finance and economic development. The ability of governments
to preserve low levels of unemployment and—by extension—to sustain Canadians'– 52 –

faith in the economic benefits of immigration is critical. The toxic combination of
economic and cultural anxiety has not emerged as strongly here, not simply becauseof a distinctive culture but also because of Canada's unemployment record, themildness of the 2007–2008 recession in this country and the widespread faith that
immigration has a positive impact on the economy. Those who support Canada's
approach to immigration—and especially those who seek to increase immigration—
should not assume support for immigration is a cultural given. Supporters need tofocus not just on immigration policy but also on issues of economic inequality andeconomic security for the population as whole.

Notes(1) Fuller details of the analysis on which this talk is based can be found in Banting
and Soroka 2020 and Banting and Soroka forthcoming.
(2) The government’s planned increase was interrupted by the pandemic, which
is not dealt with in this paper. Admission numbers fell significantly during
the pandemic, but as the crisis fades, the government seems to return to theadmission levels set out in its earlier policy.
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(Queen's University)– 54 –