Government monitoring public views on asylum seekers
OTTAWA— The federal government has been closely monitoring public reaction to the influx of asylum seekers in Canada — by regularly conducting national surveys and measuring discussions on social media.
Documents released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act show department officials receive weekly internal updates on media coverage and public re- sponse to issues related to asylum seekers coming irregularly into the country across the Canada-U.S. border.
This monitoring includes internal polling conducted by the Immigration Department to track public opinion about asylum seekers. Two mid-year surveys of 2,000 Canadians, which were conducted by the department in March, suggested Canadians were not overly confident about Canada’s ability to man- age the border at unguarded points of entry and had little sense of obligation about accepting asylum seekers from the United States.
Fewer than half of respondents — 43 per cent in a telephone survey and 35 per cent in an online survey — agreed that Canada is taking appropriate steps to manage irregular border crossings.
Forty-two per cent of telephone respondents and just 18 per cent of those online indicat- ed they felt the number of people coming to Canada and claiming asylum was at an appropriate level.
“Canadians are more receptive to refugees who have been selected by the government of Canada compared to those who come to Canada and claim asylum,” the internal document notes as one of its key takeaways from the public survey.
The documents also show the Immigration Department closely measures public com- ment about asylum seekers on social media.
This includes a weekly average of how many times the issue is mentioned every day.
The government also measures the number of times media stories published about asylum seekers include “myths countering messaging.”
It also uses social media as a tool to disseminate information as part of its outreach efforts to discourage irregular migrants from coming to Canada.