Keith Banting, Queen’s University and Stuart Soroka, University of Michigan. Stuart Suroka is also a Fellow of the Environics Institute. This paper has been published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique Volume 53, No. 4 (December 2020).
Canada has often been seen as immune from the powerful backlash against globalization and immigration that has driven political shifts elsewhere. This paper challenges this belief, at least in part, by tracing the evolution of public attitudes towards immigration and analyzing the factors that have shaped the trajectory for over three decades. Drawing on nearly forty years of Environics Focus Canada surveys, combined with annual data on macroeconomics and immigration flows, findings here suggest that Canadians’ tolerance towards immigration responds to immigration flows, and is heavily influenced by macroeconomic conditions.
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