Commentary
By David Leis

For decades, immigration in this country was tied to economic need, integration and national interest. Then Ottawa abandoned that model and opened the floodgates in the name of ideology, cheap labour and political advantage.

Now Canadians are living with the consequences.

They see housing costs spiralling out of control. They see overcrowded hospitals and strained schools. They see food banks overwhelmed, public infrastructure stretched to the limit, and civic trust beginning to fray.

Then they are told none of this has anything to do with immigration. That is no longer believable.

Canadians were never opposed to immigration itself. Immigration helped build this country and remains essential to its future. What Canadians increasingly oppose is an immigration system that no longer appears connected to the country’s ability to absorb people successfully or preserve the social cohesion that made Canada work in the first place.

For most of Canada’s modern history, immigration operated on what was often called a “tap on, tap off” model. Immigration levels rose when the economy needed workers and slowed when the country faced economic strain. Governments understood there were limits to how quickly the country could absorb newcomers into housing, schools, health care systems and the broader culture.

The goal was nation-building. But after 2015, immigration policy stopped being tied to the country’s capacity to absorb newcomers. Temporary foreign worker programs expanded rapidly, while international student streams increasingly became backdoor labour pipelines.

Before the pandemic, temporary residents made up less than three per cent of Canada’s population. By 2024, that figure had surged to roughly 7.5 per cent. Ottawa knowingly opened temporary streams on a scale the country could not absorb.

In 2023 alone, Canada’s population grew by more than 1.2 million people, the fastest growth rate in nearly 70 years. No housing market, healthcare system or public infrastructure could absorb that kind of surge.

Mass immigration also became politically useful. Governments increasingly treated population growth as both an economic talking point and a long-term political strategy, while critics were marginalized as intolerant or anti-immigrant.

Instead, Canada was increasingly presented, in the words of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, as a “post-national” country where preserving separate identities mattered more than building a shared national culture. Today, even discussing integration into a common civic culture rooted in democratic traditions, mutual responsibility, respect for the rule of law, and social trust can provoke accusations of intolerance.

A country cannot remain cohesive if millions of people arrive faster than they can realistically integrate into the institutions, traditions and civic culture of the nation receiving them. A country also needs a shared sense of identity and trust. Without it, fragmentation grows.

Canadians are now witnessing imported foreign conflicts spilling into their streets, rising social tensions and increasing pressure on police, courts and public institutions. Too often, political leaders appear more concerned about offending activists than defending the principles and social norms that once held the country together.

Even more troubling is the growing fear around speaking honestly about immigration itself. Canadians were shamed into silence while the country was fundamentally transformed around them.

No healthy democracy can function that way.

This is not about shutting the door on immigration. It is about restoring control, balance and common sense.

Canada absolutely needs immigration, but immigration must serve the country, not overwhelm it.

That means sharply reducing temporary resident streams, ending the abuse of foreign worker programs, tying immigration levels to housing and infrastructure capacity and restoring integration and citizenship as core expectations of Canadian immigration policy.

Most importantly, it means rejecting the idea that borders, national identity and social cohesion are somehow outdated concepts in a modern country.

They are not outdated. They are the foundation of national stability.

A sovereign country has both the right and the responsibility to decide who comes in, in what numbers and under what conditions. That should never have become controversial.

Immigration can strengthen a nation, and Canada itself is proof of that, but immigration without limits, integration or national purpose weakens it.

And the longer Ottawa refuses to admit the damage, the harder it will become to repair what made Canada work in the first place.

David Leis is President and CEO of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and host of the Leaders on the Frontier podcast.

What The Polls Say

• A January 2026 national poll by Research Co. found only 34 per cent of Canadians now say immigration is having a “mostly positive” effect on the country, down nine points since mid‑ 2025, while 48 per cent say it is having a “mostly negative” effect, up from 26 per cent in 2022. In the same survey, 42 per cent said the number of legal immigrants admitted to Canada should be reduced, compared with 35 per cent who would keep levels steady and just 13 per cent who favour an increase.

• Environics Institute’s Focus Canada 2025 survey reports that 56 per cent of Canadians believe the country accepts “too many” immigrants, a sharp increase over the past few years that has now levelled off at a historically high level. That majority view is now common across most regions, with agreement rising in Alberta and Quebec even as it eases somewhat in Ontario and parts of the Prairies.

• Abacus Data’s late‑ 2025 polling finds about 49 per cent of Canadians now hold negative views of immigration, virtually unchanged from 2024, while only about one quarter view immigration positively. In the same research, roughly seven in ten respondents link high immigration levels to rising housing costs and majorities say it is adding pressure to health care and other public services.

• An Environics Institute review of trends notes that whereas two‑ thirds of Canadians rejected the idea that immigration levels were too high in 2020, a majority now say Canada is taking in too many newcomers. The institute ties this reversal largely to growing concern about how immigration interacts with the housing crisis.

• A January 2026 national survey cited by global mobility analysts reports that just 34 per cent of Canadians now see immigration as a positive for the country, compared with 48 per cent who view it negatively. That marks one of the most dramatic shifts in Canadian opinion on immigration in recent decades.