Canadians become more comfortable with diversity, survey results reveal

A new survey suggests Canadians are growing increasingly comfortable with cultural diversity — and that Ottawa is the country’s most welcoming big city for newcomers.

The poll, conducted by Montreal’s Leger Marketing, found that Canadians expressed more positive views about indigenous people, Muslims and Jews in 2017 than in 2013.

According to poll results released Friday, 55 per cent of respondents held positive opinions about Muslims in March 2017, up from 46 per cent in March 2013.

The overall positive opinion toward aboriginals climbed to 73 per cent from 60 per cent during the same time period.

The survey also suggested that respondents believed relations have improved with the aboriginal and Muslim communities during the past four years.

“I think more Canadians are embracing diversity, even though there’s an important minority that remain uneasy,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, which commissioned the poll.

The non-profit group has tracked Canadian attitudes toward the country’s ethnic and religious communities for more than a decade.

Jedwab said he believes the improving climate for minority groups in Canada can be attributed, in part, to the “sunny ways” government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I actually have to think this has to do with the tone of this government,” he said Friday. “I think leadership plays a role.”

Trudeau came to power after a divisive 2015 election campaign during which the Conservatives raised the possibility of banning the niqab among federal civil servants, and establishing a tip line to report “barbaric cultural practices.”

The new survey also examined Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration.

It found that a significant number of respondents (38 per cent) say the country has too many immigrants; a plurality (41 per cent) say the country has the right number, while a small minority (10 per cent) say Canada has too few.

Respondents living in Calgary (45.5 per cent) and Hamilton-Niagara (45.2 per cent) were the most likely to say that there are too many immigrants.

Those who called Ottawa home were the least likely (31.2 per cent) to say Canada had too many immigrants, according to a breakdown of attitudes in the country’s seven major metropolitan areas.

The survey asked respondents to categorize themselves on the political spectrum as right, centreright, centre, centre-left or left, and pollsters found a strong correlation between an individual’s political identity and their views on immigration and multiculturalism.

Asked if they agree that there are too many immigrants in Canada, 63.1 per cent of those who placed themselves on the right said, ‘Yes.’ That percentage steadily declined from centre-right (40.8 per cent) to centre (34.8) to centre-left (20.6 per cent) to left (16.9 per cent).

The poll also found Canadians continue to admire Americans even if they don’t like their blustery president.

Two-thirds of respondents said they held a positive view of Americans, while a significant majority (73 per cent) held a negative view of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Jedwab said the rise in Canadians’ positive sentiment toward the country’s minority communities may reflect a backlash of sorts against Trump. “I think Canadians, by and large, don’t like what they see south of border,” he said.

The findings were based on a survey of 2,600 Canadians who agreed to complete an online questionnaire during two weeks in March. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the poll results would not differ by more than 2.9 percentage points from results obtained by interviewing every adult Canadian.