As President Donald Trump unveils a new temporary travel ban, Canadians are growing weary of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s open-door refugee policy, according to a new poll.
Though a majority still support the government’s handling of refugees, fully 25 percent now favor a Trump-style travel ban and 41 percent say Canada is accepting too many refugees. Just 11 percent of Canadians say the country needs to accept more refugees.
The Angus Reid Institute poll was released in the midst of a growing refugee crisis at several flashpoints along the Canada-U.S. border, including a deluge of illegals streaming through an unofficial and remote Manitoba-North Dakota crossing that converges on the small Canadian town of Emerson. There is also growing alarm due to reports out of Europe, and Sweden in particular, where similar liberal policies are producing refugee ghettos and an alarming increase in crime that the liberal media insists is “fake news.”
The online poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 and was conducted has poll was conducted between Feb. 6-9, 2017, using a random sample of 1,508 adult Canadians
The survey indicates that Conservative Party supporters are less inclined than Liberal or New Democrat supporters to agree that the country should be taking a welcoming stance and accepting more refugees. Conservatives are somewhat split on the issue, with its evangelical base more accepting of refugees than more secular supporters.
“We tend to, when we are looking a numbers, look at the majority view. But the fact that one in four Canadians are of the mind that we should be looking to our own travel ban is significant and is part of a red flag that is starting to emerge in terms of refugee policy,” Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute told CBC News.
“Certainly in terms of that ‘too many, too few’ debate, a lot more people think it’s too many than too few,” she said.
Though 57 per cent of Canadians still say Trudeau was right in not replicating President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban, fully one-quarter now want a similar ban.
The numbers are interesting given Canadian society’s historic acceptance of refugees.
A clear majority of 54 per cent say refugees are not assimilating into mainstream society while 46 percent say they do try to merge with Canadians.
Kurl said the numbers of people showing opposition or dissatisfaction with the refugee resettlement plan may be in a minority but “it’s far from a handful of people that can be easily dismissed,” she said.
“There are significant segments of folks who are expressing opposition and unease and anxiety to both the numbers, our target levels of 40,000, and then there is a smaller group, but not a fringe group, who are questioning whether we should be taking refugees at all.”
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