The Week in Polling: Liberal ridings want Trudeau gone, Canadians have given up on homeownership, Canada’s immigration consensus cracks

More than 40 percent of Canadian renters have given up on homeownership More than 40 percent of Canadian renters have given up on the dream of ever owning a home, or do not expect they will ever be able to own one. Eight percent want to buy a house but are waiting for interest rates to come down. Thirty percent want to buy a house but can’t afford it, and only 5 percent of renters are in the market now and looking to purchase a home. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, the average home now costs just under $700,000. At least eight percent of renters waiting for the interest rates to come down have some hope in buying a home, as the Bank of Canada has recently cut its key interest rate by a half-point, to 3.75 percent. More than half of Canadians say current levels of immigration have made the country ‘worse off’ In recent years, Canada’s population has experienced rapid growth through immigration. “In the last three-and-a-half years, Canada’s population has grown by 3 million people, the level the country typically experiences in a decade, and slightly more than we experienced in the entire 1990s,” wrote senior director of the Smart Prosperity Institute Mike Moffat in The Hub. Canadians are feeling the growth on the ground. Thirty percent of Canadians reported feeling their country is “much worse off,” and 23 percent say it’s “mostly worse off” due to current immigration levels. Meanwhile, 15 percent believe immigration makes Canada “mostly better off.” Just 3 percent feel it makes the country “much better off.” As such, a combined 53 percent of Canadians, one in two, think immigration is having a negative impact on Canada. It’s a 10 percent increase from last year. Just under 70 percent of Conservative voters say the level of immigration is “negatively impacting the country.” That is a 17-point increase from 18 months ago. A rising number of Canadians also feel that the current level of immigration into Canada has negatively impacted specific aspects of the country, like housing, health care, and economic growth. In an effort to respond to these concerns around their immigration policies, this week the Trudeau government announced a significant pivot. For the first time in years, Canada plans to lower its intake of new permanent residents, bringing in 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026, and 365,000 in 2027; down from 485,000 in 2024. In doing so, they estimate Canada’s population will drop slightly by 0.2 percent in 2025 and 2026 before returning to growth of 0.8 percent in 2027. “In the tumultuous times as we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labour needs and maintaining population growth, we didn’t get the balance quite right,” Trudeau admitted on Thursday.