More than 70% of Canadians think Liberals’ new refugee target is too
high: poll, Kelly Hobson 2/19/16
More than 70 per cent
of Canadians don’t support the federal government taking in more than 25,000
Syrian refugees, according to a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute. Two in five respondents think Canada
should stop taking in Syrian refugees immediately.
As of Tuesday, more
than 21,000 refugees had arrived in Canada, according to the government’s
website. The government is working to meet its target of 25,000 Syrian refugees
by the end of February.
Immigration Minister
John McCallum recently promised the Liberals would exceed their original
commitment and accept a total of between 35,000 and 50,000 Syrian refugees by
the end of 2016. The Angus Reid poll suggests this is at odds with what the
majority of Canadians want.
Support for exceeding the
25,000 benchmark is lowest in the Prairies and Quebec, where fewer than a
quarter of respondents were in favour. It is highest in B.C., where roughly two
in five respondents were in favour.
The poll results come
just days after a Calgary school was vandalized with the message “Syrians Go
Home and Die.” That is one of several incidents across the country that suggest
brewing anti-refugee sentiments. A group of Syrian refugees was pepper
sprayed in Vancouver last month; a Peterborough, Ont. mosque was set ablaze in
a suspected hate crime shortly after the November Paris attacks. McCallum has
acknowledged the potential for negative attitudes toward the arriving refugees.
“It’s a delicate
balance,” he said in January. “We want to welcome all of these refugees
with open hearts and with love the way Canadians have, but at the same time we
are mindful that we don’t want to offend Canadians who have themselves been
waiting for a long time for social housing and things of that nature.”
Despite the grim
outlook on the Liberals’ yearlong commitment, this is the first Angus Reid
Institute poll that suggests a majority of Canadians support their ambitious
refugee resettlement plan. In two previous polls by the institute opposition to
the plan sat above 50 per cent, while support hovered near 40 per cent.
“A big driver of that
opposition was concern and anxiety around the timelines,” Shachi Kurl,
executive director of the Angus Reid Institute said. The government originally
committed to meet their target of 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2015,
but later backtracked. “Extending the deadline to March 1 has taken the
temperature down,” Kurl said.
This newest poll shows
those numbers have flipped, with 52 per cent of respondents now in favour of
the plan, and 44 per cent opposed.
Other pollsters have
reported majority support for the refugee plan — a Nanos Research survey in
November said 65 per cent of Canadians supported or somewhat supported the
Liberal plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.
The Angus Reid Institute
poll garnered responses from more than 1,500 Canadians who are members of the
Angus Reid Forum, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage
points, 19 times out of 20. The poll was paid for and commissioned by the Angus
Reid Institute.
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