Immigrants are more likely than people born in Canada to identify human rights, respect for the law, gender equality and diversity as shared Canadian values, according to Statistics Canada survey results in briefing notes prepared for Immigration Minister Lena Diab and obtained by The Canadian Press through an access to information request.
Higher scores on every value tested
The survey asked respondents whether they saw six things as shared “Canadian values”: human rights, respect for the law, gender equality, linguistic duality, ethnic and cultural diversity, and respect for Indigenous culture. On every one, the share of immigrants who said yes was higher than the share of Canadian-born respondents.
The widest gap was on respect for the law. Among immigrants who arrived in Canada at age 13 or older, 67% saw it as a shared Canadian value, compared with just 40% of people born here. Statistics Canada’s published study of the same data found immigrants overall were also more likely to say Canadians share values on human rights (67% versus 55%) and gender equality (50% versus 30%) to a great extent. Immigrants who arrived at age 12 or younger answered much more like the Canadian-born.
The results, part of the briefing package assembled for Diab when she took over the immigration portfolio last May, were drawn from Statistics Canada’s general social survey on social identity. The data was collected between August 2020 and February 2021 from more than 34,000 people, including almost 14,000 landed immigrants.
Satisfaction follows the same pattern
About 58% of immigrants said they were satisfied with their lives, compared with 44% of Canadian-born respondents — despite the survey being conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people were stuck at home or out of work.
Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, said the finding matches his organization’s research: immigrants stay focused on future progress after sacrificing to come to Canada. “As long as they feel that they’re making progress, they’ll be willing to stay,” he said.
Lori Wilkinson, Canada Research Chair in migration at the University of Manitoba, cautioned that satisfaction across the whole population has likely fallen since, as the cost of living climbed. “I think people in general, whether you’re immigrant or not, are going to be more angry the longer that affordability is not addressed,” she said.
The longer they’re here, the more Canadian the answers
Statistics Canada’s study adds a pattern the briefing notes only hint at: an immigrant’s perception of shared Canadian values is highest in the first five years after arrival and gradually declines with time in Canada — for human rights, from 77% among those here five years or less to 62% among those here 20 years or more. Even that long-settled group, though, still scored higher than the Canadian-born.
Wilkinson reads the convergence as assimilation in the literal sense. “The longer (immigrants) stay here, the more they act Canadian. And I suspect that that’s an issue with attitudes as well,” she said. “The more you’re here, you pick up the norms and values of the Canadians that you live around.”
Housing and the politics around it
The briefing materials also told the minister that immigrants and non-permanent residents “play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s housing market,” driving demand for owned homes and rentals. That framing sits uneasily beside the federal government’s own position: Ottawa has linked rising housing costs to population growth as part of its rationale for reducing admissions of temporary and permanent residents.
Bernhard disputes the weight put on that link, citing Statistics Canada research attributing about 11% of the increase in median home prices between 2006 and 2021 to immigration. Wilkinson, for her part, said she was “deeply angered” by how the briefing framed immigration’s housing effect, given the lack of regional detail, and warned planned cuts could damage the economy — international students alone spend some $4 billion a year.
The documents surfaced as roughly half of Canadians tell pollsters too many immigrants are coming to the country — a political backdrop against which the survey’s central finding stands out: the newest Canadians are the most likely to say this country stands for human rights, equality and the rule of law.
