Key Issues in the Levels Plan – Racism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
In 2024, AAISA released a summary of the key changes made in the 2025 – 27 Levels Plan. Now, we explore the implications of the plan further through an in-depth analysis. AAISA is releasing several Insights articles about:
- Racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric
After the publication of this last article in the series, AAISA members will receive these articles in a report format to share with colleagues within and outside the sector. We encourage members who have responses to this analysis, corrections, or additions, to contact mcunningham@aaisa.ca.
Our Analysis So Far
In this series, we have discussed a number of aspects of the new admissions levels released in October and the general shift in immigration policy they seem to foretell:
- We saw that permanent resident admissions levels are being reduced, although only to pre-COVID levels. We applauded the government’s decision to increase TR-to-PR pathways and to take the first small steps toward a regularization program.
- We saw that temporary resident admissions levels are also being reduced, but the predictions rely heavily on ominous and risky “outflow” numbers.
- We argued that refugees and other newcomers with humanitarian-class admissions would pay an intolerable cost for the reduction in admissions made in their cases. We questioned the government’s policy when it comes to refugee claimants, who shouldn’t be included in any government metrics, including the “5% of the population” goal for temporary residents, as they are exerting their international legal rights.
In this new article, we will discuss a broader context: the statistics about rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada. We will analyze how the Levels Plan changes and the communications around them resonate in the context of these statistics.
Racism, Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric, and the Levels Plan
News media articles have proliferated over the last year about rising anti-immigration sentiment in the Canadian population, from the National Post to The Breach, as well as the Globe and Mail, CBC, The Hill Times, and other national and even international publications.
It is in this context that IRCC announced the reduction in admissions levels through the Levels Plan on October 24, 2024. Many organizations and workers in the sector fear that the reduction indicated a sea change in the government’s attitude toward immigration.
This sense is undoubtedly exacerbated by alarming racism in public discourse south of the border, including threats of mass deportations that would imperil civil rights for immigrants in North America if carried out.
In this article, we review the data that suggests an increase in anti-immigration sentiment in Canada and put it into historical context. We look at both public opinion polls and at data on hate crimes and other physical and social instances of intolerance.
With this background, we end by analyzing how the Levels Plan interacts with anti-immigrant sentiment. On the surface, the change in the Levels Plan has felt to many people in the sector like a capitulation to rising public anti-immigrant sentiment. However, the government has justified the decision in terms of economic affordability and “management” of the immigration system. We attempt to disentangle these ideas.
Our close examination of the policy and accompanying communications has suggested that the Levels Plan decisions have been built on unspoken underlying presumptions that devalue the contributions of immigrants to Canada. In particular, the negative effects of the policy changes seem set to land squarely on temporary residents and people in the humanitarian admissions class. We urge the government to recognize that people of all statuses deserve equal care and consideration in the construction of policy, and to stand firm against xenophobic elements in the public discourse.
Data about public opinion on immigration in Canada
For this article, we look at three sources: the data of the Canadian Election Studies, IRCC’s own internal data, and the Environics Institute. We use three sources to emphasize that single public opinion surveys, however well-executed, should be taken as one data point among several.
To build a historical picture, we begin with data from the Canadian Election Studies. This data is reported and analyzed in a policy paper from the international IZA Institute of Labour Economics. The data extends from 1988 to 2019. This paper finds that anti-immigration sentiment rose slowly between about 2004 and 2019, after historically high levels of acceptance for immigration in the early 2000s.
From the IZA working paper “Public attitudes toward immigration in Canada: Decreased support and increased political polarization.”
IRCC’s own opinions research and consultations extend between 1996 and 2024. Their public opinion findings were published in January 2024 as part of Minister Miller’s briefing package, as were results of the public consultation about the Levels Plan.
IRCC’s findings also suggest a historic uptick in disapproval about immigration policy in November 2023. But it’s worth noting that an equally historic record was being set in the opposite direction as recently as March 2022. In that month, one out of five people surveyed said there were too few immigrants to Canada. And, during a public consultation about the Levels Plan in January 2024, numbers closer to the norm of the last five years were once again recorded, shown in the dashed line on the chart above.
Finally, this October, the Environics Institute’s well-established nationwide survey program found a noticeable uptick in the number of people in their sample who agreed with statements like “Overall, there is too much immigration to Canada” (58% agree), “Too many refugees are not real refugees” (43% agree), and “Too many immigrants do not adopt Canadian values” (57% agree). We have reproduced one of these graphs below; more can be seen in the full report.
It may seem counterintuitive to some that the Environics Institute found that the public opinion results were largely similar across demographic groups, including race and immigration status. However, the Canadian Election Studies data, which extended only to 2019, concurred that party affiliation was more predictive of a person’s opinion on immigration than their own demographic group.
Newcomers are not a homogenous group. These results are not generally disaggregated for immigration stream, although the Canadian Election Studies data considers recency of immigration. Newcomers have varying political commitments and perspectives, and the sources from which they receive their news and information can affect how they feel about Canada’s immigration system just as it does for Canadian-born people. Addressing solidarity and non-discrimination among newcomers, and dispelling general myths about immigration even among immigrants, may be one valuable role for settlement providers to play.
There’s also the fact that the questions asked by these surveys could be interpreted in different ways by different people. Indeed, newcomers may be especially likely to have a unique political perspective unanticipated by Canadian-born survey designers and analysts.
All that said, the Canadian Election Studies data does still record a significant role for both race and immigration status in opinions on immigration. Also, public anti-immigrant discourse is primarily published and managed by white non-immigrants. The nuances we discuss above are important, but it’s also important not to lose sight of the ways that the prevalence of white non-immigrants in Canadian institutions influence what is and isn’t said about immigration policy.
Data about hate crimes based on race, religion, and immigrant status, and online hate incidents
For the first time in 2023, Canadian statistics on hate crimes began distinguishing crimes that appeared to be based solely on immigration status. Sixteen were reported. However, anti-immigration sentiment, racism, and bigotry based on religion are often difficult to disentangle. Racism and anti-immigration sentiment go hand in hand. For example, violence and verbal assaults on South Asian people have often been framed in terms of the perpetrator’s perception of “foreignness”.
In total, 4,777 hate crimes were reported to police in Canada, of which about 45% were based on race and about 26% on religion. This is almost double the number of such crimes reported to police last year, a highly concerning increase.
Crimes based on hatred of religion constituted an important part of that increase (as well as crimes based on sexual orientation). Crimes against Muslim people increased the most between 2022 and 2023, while crimes against Jewish people, which also increased, continued to constitute almost three-quarters of reported hate crimes. Crimes against Sikh, Hindu, and Buddhist people also rose significantly. The plurality of hate crimes based on race were perpetrated against Black people (35%).
On October 22, 2024, the government released Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate. This report built on the Statistics Canada findings reported above, which also suggested only about one in five hate incidents is reported to police.
Because hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ community and the Canadian Jewish community, for example, are also increasing, it seems likely that the increase can be partially attributed to immigration-specific issues, but also partially to a generalized activation of intolerance. Increasing boldness in discrimination and hateful violence may be encouraged by factors like online radicalization and political polarization.
The Action Plan linked above promised millions of dollars of funding through Heritage Canada to promote anti-hate programming through Canadian Heritage, Public Safety Canada, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and other institutions. Over the next years, we hope to see immigrant-serving organizations, including grassroots and ethnocultural organizations, as collaborators in these efforts to combat xenophobia. Local Immigration Partnerships are specifically named in the Action Plan as important actors in the cultivation of a welcoming atmosphere in our communities, where discrimination and prejudice are not tolerated.
We shouldn’t view this increase in hate crimes or in anti-immigration sentiment purely through the lens of statistics. Anecdotally, many immigrants have reported increasing incidents of confrontational, frightening bigotry which they often do not report to police. In this Toronto Star article on racism against South Asian people (paywalled), for example, a man reports being shouted at from car windows and being pushed on the sidewalk over the last six months.
The effects of such incidents are personal and harmful. The victim may feel deeply angry and frightened and may have to cope with shame. And, as the Action Plan points out, police don’t always take such incidents seriously.
Outright hate crimes are still extremely rare. However, every such incident that occurs casts a pall over families and communities. They may cause people who share the same identity or background to suffer anxiety and alienation. Everyday incidents of hostility and ignorance, sometimes called microaggressions, also affect peoples’ well-being and their feelings about Canada and about themselves. The narrative that attributes economic and social issues in Canada to immigration might also increase these incidents as people who believe those narratives express their hostility and resentment.
Institutions can also affect how welcomed immigrants feel in Canada through the ways that they interact with newcomers. With the data in context, we now turn to examine what the Levels Plan 2023 – 25 can tell us about IRCC’s response to rising rates of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Levels Plan changes in the context of rising racism and anti-immigrant sentiment
The very fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally recorded a video addressing the change in the Levels Plan, alongside the considerable media coverage from other sources, shows that something is different about this year’s admission target adjustments.
Most years, the Levels Plan is like many government documents—a declaration filed in a routine manner by one bureaucratic institution with another. Important, but not exciting enough to make the news.
What should be a typical record of a policy decision has become a national discussion point as immigration has risen to the surface of Canadian discourse as a political wedge issue.
The initial press release around the Levels Plan specifically cites two reasons for the decision: “pressures on housing, infrastructure and social services” and the expectation of a “well-managed immigration system”. Our concern with this framing—both the economic question of pressures, and the social question of “management”–is that it encourages xenophobes and others to direct their anger and resentment toward immigrants in our communities and that not enough has been done to correct or counter this narrative.
We will address the implications of each of the reasons cited for the decision in turn.
Concern 1: Housing affordability
Let’s start with affordability. We will focus on housing affordability, since this is the question that has floated to the top of the discussion on economics and immigration. For example, the Environics Institute found that people who said they felt Canada accepted too many immigrants cited housing as their main concern.
Even prior to the increase in immigration levels during Covid, Canada’s housing stock was deeply inadequate. Experts point to issues such as the lack of a centralized federal housing plan and the lack of investment in non-market housing for people in the lowest income bracket. Cities like Vancouver have had a rental vacancy rate below the benchmark of 3% since the 1990s, and some observers say that low-income housing in particular has been in constant crisis in Canada for over 100 years. If rapid population growth has accelerated Canada’s confrontation with its housing market issues, it’s only because the problem has begun to affect the middle class more broadly. The worst-case scenario is that the government’s response only addresses the issue for the middle class as well.
The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) informally reviewed the estimates made in the Levels Plan that concern the gap between the amount of housing Canada needs and the amount of housing we have. Overall, they concurred that if the government’s projections were sound, the housing gap would be reduced in 2030 by about half. But they don’t tell us which half. Experts on housing continue to tell us that decreasing demand alone, with no other interventions to distribute housing units more fairly, will not be enough to solve the housing crisis. Even if it did, it would be heinous to overtly base a housing plan around “redistributing” housing from one high-need group to another.
If the policy exclusively concerned aspiring immigrants, perhaps we could say that, with Canada’s housing market so tight, the government wants to encourage people abroad to choose another country over Canada for the time being if they want to move elsewhere to work or study. To be sure, this would be a huge loss to Canada, since Canada needs the expertise aspiring immigrants provide. But the question would be about closing off choices for people who may still have other options—not harming people who have already made enormous sacrifices to work and live in Canada.
But in fact, the PBO observed that the extremely high temporary resident “outflow” numbers make up most of the proposed population change. We noted the same in our article on temporary residence admissions levels changes. The PBO believes that these numbers pose a “significant risk” to the prediction—that is, that they’re concerned people won’t leave. Their calculation is that 93 percent of the current temporary resident population will have to leave to make IRCC’s projections a reality. Whether those people are forced out after all their contributions to Canada, or whether they overstay and lose status, the “outflow” numbers suggest significant harm to current temporary residents.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation found that 26.6% of recent immigrants were living in unsafe, overcrowded, or unaffordable housing, compared to 10% of non-immigrants. The situation is even more dire among service users. A 2020 survey in Edmonton performed by Catholic Social Services found that 62% of the clients in their sample were spending more than half of their income on housing.
The Canadian government should feel an obligation to protect temporary residents, who have already contributed significantly to Canada’s economy and society. On some programs, so-called “temporary” residents may have lived in Canada for more than a decade. And in many cases, the reasons that temporary residents have been unable to gain permanent status has been due to inefficiencies and inequities within the immigration system, not out of lack of commitment to Canada.
The government has indicated that TR-to-PR pathways are a priority in the new Levels Plan. This indicates a promising commitment to reforming the temporary residence program. Yet those same policies are undermined by any approach that seeks to effect change in the housing market by harming temporary residents.
Many experts have flagged that newcomers did not cause the housing crisis Canada currently faces, and ejecting temporary residents, in addition to being unjust, will not sustainably solve our housing problems. In fact, newcomers may be instrumental in solving the issue. Government data shows that immigrants make up 23% of all residential contractors, and more than 40% of all architects. The presence of newcomers in the construction trades could be strengthened even further with targeted recruitment and training, incentives to reskill that could apply to both immigrants and Canadians, and improvements to foreign qualification recognition. It is not a neutral decision to forego these policy instruments and focus instead on expelling temporary residents.
In other words, newcomers did not cause this issue, and in fact immigration may be instrumental in solving it.
Concern 2: “Managing” migration
Some experts note that perception of “control” over immigration is a major driver of anti-immigrant sentiment. If so, they speculate, increasing perception of control over immigration among the general public might placate fears and hostility.
There is some evidence that the government considered a response to a perception of “uncontrolled immigration” central to their policy reasoning. For example, listen to Minister Marc Miller’s interview with CBC’s Catherine Cullen, where the idea of “controlled” or “managed” migration is clearly one of the major talking points: “[Canadians] expect us to have a ‘controlled, managed’ migration system” (2:20), “Canadians expect us to have a managed immigration system that is controlled…we are taking back control from some provinces and territories” (3:30), and “we have to have a managed migration system that makes sense to everyone” (5:42). Once you notice this phrase, you see it everywhere.
It’s strange to see the government consent to the framing that the immigration system was “uncontrolled” before, and is just now about to become “controlled”. This framing promotes an incorrect, xenophobic vision of how immigration works.
The immigration system lacks oversight of Canadian actors like employers and consultants, as well as coordination between federal and provincial governments. This lack of oversight can result in the exploitation of vulnerable people for profit. This is something the government emphasized, to its credit, in Prime Minister Trudeau’s address. However, one thing it certainly doesn’t lack is control over immigrants’ lives.
A popular misconception is that it’s “too easy” to come to Canada or that newcomers are “flooding in.” This especially dehumanizing metaphor of immigration as a “flood, influx”, “flow,” or “surge” is even reinforced by the Prime Minister in his address, in which he talks about “turning off the taps” of immigration. These metaphors reduce human beings who happen to choose to move between countries to a natural force of physics, a fluid or mass, many identical atoms without any internal qualities. They describe immigration as a mindless vector of motion into which the government can intervene for the benefit of other parties without any moral consideration of migrants themselves.
Contrary to alarmist rhetoric, immigration is probably one of the areas of government where bureaucratic control is most extensive. Immigrating means navigating a labyrinth of strict rules, requirements, deadlines, and paperwork. Emphasizing the introduction of “control” only validates xenophobic misconceptions.
It’s understandable that many people in the sector have reacted with dismay and anxiety to the government’s framing of immigration and the affordability crisis in the new Levels Plan. This is even though countervailing, pro-immigrant narratives are also present in the government’s announcements. For example, government communications emphasize a political commitment to multiculturalism and the ways that newcomers, too, suffer from strained social systems. Yet these parallel statements haven’t soothed the minds of many observers in the sector.
We feel this is because all these statements are still being made as part of a policy decision that takes for granted xenophobic premises. The reasons we have been given for the Levels Plan decisions suggest that the most intolerant and misinformed ideas about immigration have been right all along. They suggest that there were indeed “uncontrolled floods” of immigrants; now the policy will introduce new levels of control. They suggest that those immigrants were indeed taking resources to which Canadian-born people are entitled; now the policy will adjust the economy to ensure those entitlements.
We do not believe the government explicitly consents to or promotes this ugly narrative. We can see, in public discourse in other countries, that governments can make even more explicit and racist claims outright in today’s environment. But basing the policy response in this narrative makes all pro-immigrant statements come across as minor cracks in a deeply anti-immigrant foundation.
Canadians from all backgrounds are seeking someone to blame for difficulties in the economy and in society. We fear that the policy mindset which underlies the Levels Plan communications will only legitimate the ways that some have turned that blame against newcomers.
AAISA promotes solidarity among newcomers and among organizations in the settlement sector in the face of these changes. Canada is still a place where anti-immigrant ideas that have become mainstream in other countries are publicly unacceptable. Together, we must strive to ensure that remains the case.
Settlement organizations are an important part of that struggle. The government has already named Local Immigration Partnerships as a key element in its Action Plan against hate crimes; we believe that monitoring activities performed through this Action Plan will be an important responsibility for settlement organizations moving forward.
Settlement organizations can also consider how the well-being of racialized newcomers, newcomers with precarious status, and other newcomers with multiple marginalizations can be re-centered in their work.
And we can promote positive narratives about newcomers, which we experience every day. Through cross-sectoral collaboration, we can especially bring those narratives to new fields where pro-immigrant messages may not be universal.
AAISA invites concerned members of the sector to reach out to participate in the exploration of a short-term committee that would consider next steps, responses, and action plans concerning anti-immigrant sentiment in Alberta.