A pair of studies released over the past year by the Broadbent Institute and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Canada examine shifts in attitudes toward immigration and the role that unions can play in resisting anti-immigrant backlash and promoting migrant workers’ rights.
“Shifting Borders: Canadian Attitudes Towards Immigration,” released in April 2025, finds that Canadians’ perspectives about immigration policy are changing, with growing numbers of people skeptical about its positive economic benefits. As the authors of the report note, “Alongside — and perhaps thanks to — growing economic pressures, opposition to immigration is returning after decades of growing public acceptance and support.”
Released this month, “Solidarity Across Borders: Canadian Union Membership and Attitudes Towards Immigration,” shows that union members are more likely than non-union workers to see immigration as making positive contributions to Canada’s economy.
“This is not a fluke,” the authors write. Many unions in Canada have made fighting for immigrant and migrant rights central to their work. “Rather than scapegoating temporary foreign workers for systemic issues, Canada’s labour movement shows the way forward.”
The studies are based on survey data obtained from a representative sample of around 1,000 respondents.
Canadians have historically been more receptive to immigration than those in other Western countries. But as “Shifting Borders” shows, Canada’s relative consensus on immigration is beginning to shift in concerning directions. While a plurality of people in Canada still view immigration favourably, negative views are growing. “The consensus appears to be under threat,” the report’s authors write.
According to the study’s findings, 45 per cent of Canadians believe immigration has had a positive impact on Canada, while 32 per cent believe its effects have been negative. Meanwhile, 22 per cent of respondents in the study were neutral.
Canadians aged 39 and younger were more likely to view immigration positively, compared to those 40 and older.
Immigration is also viewed more positively among those with post-secondary education, compared to people with only a high school-level education, as well as among Liberal and NDP voters.
At the same time, attitudes seem to be changing rapidly. According to “Shifting Borders,” 38 per cent of Canadians felt their views had changed over the past year and were now more likely to want less immigration. Although 45 per cent indicated their views hadn’t changed, that nearly two in five respondents expressed a shift toward greater restrictions on immigration is notable.
A closer examination of people’s attitudes concerning the benefits and drawbacks of immigration is also revealing. “Shifting Borders” found that 69 per cent of Canadians believe immigration has put pressure on the housing market, while 64 per cent believe it has strained social programs, such as health care and education. At the same time, half of respondents thought immigration helped to grow the workforce and fill critical skill and workforce gaps.
Housing and health care in particular are viewed as especially under cost strains. Of course, survey respondents are not wrong about this. Despite housing cost growth slowing in recent years, home ownership and affordable rents are still out of reach for many working-class people. With politicians and many right-wing pundits scapegoating immigrants, it’s unsurprising that such attitudes have spread among the general public.
A cost-of-living crisis and a softening labour market provide just the context in which xenophobia can grow.
“Rather than addressing the real culprits of these economic failures, such profiteering in housing, lagging healthcare funding, and poor economic performance, some policy and influential opinion makers attempted to shift blame from empowered economic actors and chose newcomers as scapegoats for these issues,” the “Shifting Borders” authors correctly summarize.
The report does however furnish evidence that Canadians are skeptical about problematic parts of Canada’s foreign worker system.
For example, respondents generally think that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which allows some employers access to migrant workers on closed work permits without clear paths to residency or citizenship, harms both foreign and domestic workers. This is undoubtedly the case, as closed work permits expose foreign workers to employer abuse, while the use of TFWs in low-wage sectors allows employers to access cheap labour instead of raising wages. Despite being rife with worker abuse, penalties under the TWFP remain mild and seem to do little deter employer non-compliance.
In recent decades, Canada’s immigration system has grown increasingly reliant on temporary forms of migration to fill supposed labour supply gaps, while restricting access to citizenship and other pathways to permanence. Whereas temporary foreign workers represented 8 per cent of all economic migrants in 2000, these workers accounted for 49 per cent of the total in 2022. There appears to be a general opposition to this labour migration approach. A majority (61 per cent) of respondents, for example, said the continuation of the TWFP is unjust.
However, the risk is that such opposition takes misdirected forms and further feeds anti-immigrant backlash politics rather than buttressing support for ending abusive temporary labour schemes and increasing regularized and permanent forms of immigration.
As the report’s authors summarize: “Taken together, Canadians have a nuanced view of immigration. They see the roots of economic dysfunctions made worse by the expansion of the TFWP. They see the need for immigration to support our social services and fill gaps in high-skilled labour, but see the need for change to immigration policy while these gaps remain unfilled and services are strained.”
This is all the more reason to have a clear sense of where pro-immigrant sentiment is strongest in order to build the solidarity necessary to transform Canada’s approach to labour and immigration.
The second report, “Solidarity Across Borders,” does just that, highlighting the role unions continue to play in organizing opposition to exploitative labour mobility programs and promoting immigrant and migrant workers’ rights, and showing how this may be shaping the attitudes of union members more broadly.
For example, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Western Canada have all criticized the TFWP, echoing a United Nations special rapporteur who called the program a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Labour federations at the federal and provincial levels have also been strong advocates for immigrant and migrant workers. Other labour-adjacent migrant rights organizations, such as Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, have further detailed the rampant abuse of closed work permits and called for regularization and more pathways to citizenship.
The labour movement’s solidarity with immigrant and migrant workers appears to have influenced Canadian union members’ attitudes toward immigration generally.
According to the studies’ survey data, 56 per cent of union members see immigration as having positive impacts, versus 41 per cent of respondents who were not union members. Moreover, as the reports point out, this finding seems to reflect a progressive change over time. Whereas older research found that union members were disposed toward restrictionist immigration policies to limit labour supply, this appears to be far less the case today.
Union members have also bucked the trend of Canadians generally, becoming more favourable toward limits on immigration. While 41 per cent of non-union respondents have shifted to thinking Canada should allow fewer immigrants, 32 per cent of union members expressed this view.
As well, union members are much more likely to see immigrants as important for filling critical labour shortages (67 per cent), than the non-unionized (55 per cent). The unionized are also more likely to see the value of immigration for growing the workforce and supporting social welfare programs (60 per cent), compared to non-union respondents (46 per cent).
Consequently, union members tend to be more favourable to regularization and to opening greater pathways to citizenship for migrant workers.
Taken together, these two studies highlight important trends in the attitudes of Canadians toward immigration. While the cost-of-living crisis appears to be encouraging less favourable views of immigration among some, many people in Canada, particularly young people and union members, see the value in immigration and oppose exploitative labour mobility programs.
If we want to build a more just and humane immigration system — which we should — it’s clear that the labour movement will be the base from which to do this.
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