WHILE the number of Canadians galvanized over the cost of living and inflation is beginning to decrease, their attention is fixating on an issue that was once only glancingly thought of: immigration.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds Canadians’ concern over immigration has risen four-fold over the last two years, prompting the federal government to announce plans to shrink the Temporary Foreign Workers program. One-in-five (21%) say “Immigration / refugees” is one of the top issues facing the country, putting it in a tie with climate change (21%), though still far off from the high cost of living (57%), health care (45%) and housing affordability (32%).

The latter concern perhaps represents a ripple effect from Canada’s booming population driven by immigrants, both temporary and permanent. Another may be unemployment, especially among younger Canadians, who encountered an especially difficult summer job market influenced by a growing number of temporary foreign workers. One-in-five (19%) 18- to 34-year-olds say the lack of jobs is a top issue facing the country, as two-in-five (40%) that age fret over housing affordability as well.

As noted above, the Liberal government will be rolling back some of the pandemic-era changes to the Temporary Foreign Workers program, but this has had no impact on vote intentions so far. The Liberals are still operating with a large support deficit which has lasted more than a year. Among decided voters, more than two-in-five (43%) say they would vote Conservative if the election were today, while similar sized groups of one-in-five say they would support the Liberals (21%) and the NDP (19%).

In the nearly two years since the party elected Pierre Poilievre as leader, the CPC have made gains across nearly all demographics and regions at expense of the Liberals. Support for the Liberals has declined double digits in Ontario (-13) and Atlantic Canada (-17), with the Conservatives enjoying concurrent nine- and ten-point positive swings in those places respectively. The CPC have also seen at least eight-point increases in support among women 18- to 34-years-old (+8) and older than 54 (+8) and men aged 35-54 (+10).

While the vote intention story is all about gains for the Conservatives since he became leader, Poilievre himself has made little progress at improving his personal favourability. Half (52%) say they have an unfavourable view of the CPC leader, statistically identical to the figure seen when he was first elected (51%). The same is true of his favourability (36% now; 35% September 2022). He has made inroads on this front among men aged 35-54 (+9 favourability) and women 18-34 (+5), though for the latter, opinions are still overwhelmingly negative (52% unfavourable). And any demographic gains are offset by a decline (-15 favourability) among 18- to 34-year-old men over the past two years.

Link to the poll, and more key findings, here: www.angusreid.org/