Most Canadians Don’t Know How Many Immigrants Enter Canada

An annual tracking survey by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has found that the majority of adult Canadians don’t know how many landed immigrants are admitted by Canada every year.

Canada admits around 250,000 landed immigrants per year, but only nine per cent of responders to the survey gave a number remotely close to that figure. One-third of responders thought the figure was below 100,000.

Despite a general lack of awareness among Canadians of the overall number of newcomers given permanent status each year, responders were still prepared to offer an opinion on whether there were too many, too few, or about the right number of immigrants coming to Canada. Of the 3,016 responders, 26 per cent said there were too many, 10 per cent said too few, and 52 per cent stated that the present number is about right.

The poll, conducted by Harris/Decima between Feb. 7 and Feb. 20, 2014, has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.78 per cent, 19 times out of 20.