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TOP STORY
One of the most notable outcomes of the B.C. election is that if it had been up to immigrants, the B.C. Conservatives would have won easily.
Throughout the campaign, polls showed that the B.C. Conservatives’ strong showing against the NDP was owed predominantly to outsized support among B.C.’s non-white, predominantly immigrant communities.
For more than six months, Mainstreet Research has tracked a noticeable gap in B.C. Conservative support between white and non-white British Columbians.
As far back as May, Mainstreet found 50.1 per cent of Indo-Canadian respondents saying they would vote for the B.C. Conservatives, against just 11.7 per cent intending to vote B.C. NDP.
Black, East Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and South Asian respondents similarly expressed a preference for the B.C. Conservatives over the NDP.
The province’s most immigrant-heavy ridings, meanwhile, represented many of the B.C. Conservatives’ most decisive upsets.
Surrey, B.C., counts an immigration population of 45 per cent — one of the highest in Canada.
Seven of the city’s 10 ridings went for the B.C. Conservatives on Saturday. This represented an almost complete flip from 2020, when seven of nine Surrey ridings had gone NDP.
Among the flipped seats was the Surrey-Panorama riding of Jinny Sims, a one-time federal MP with the NDP. Although Sims won by a decisive 13 points last election, she was ousted on Saturday night by political newbie Bryan Tepper, a retired police officer.
The B.C. ridings with some of the fewest immigrants, meanwhile, overwhelmingly backed the NDP.
Victoria, the province’s capital, lags behind the B.C. average for both immigrant population and ethnic diversity. According to 2021 census data, just 16.7 per cent of Victorians were members of a visible minority, against 34.4 per cent province-wide. Its immigrant population is 18.6 per cent — one of the lowest of any major Canadian city.
As per the most recent count, six of seven Victoria ridings went for the NDP, with the seventh going to the Greens.
In fact, one of the B.C. Conservatives’ worst single performances was in Victoria-Beacon Hill, the downtown riding that includes the B.C. legislature. B.C. Conservative candidate Tim Thielmann managed just 19.1 per cent of the vote.
Immigrants voting Tory mirrors a trend that’s already showing up in federal polls.
Earlier this month, a poll commissioned by the immigrant-centred TV channel OMNI found that immigrants were decisively in the tank for the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre.
Of respondents, 44 per cent intended to vote Tory — roughly on par with the Canadian average.
Most notably, the OMNI poll found that the more time a newcomer spent in Canada, the more likely they were to lean Conservative.
Among immigrants who’d been in Canada for less than six years, it was a clean tie between the Conservatives and the Liberals (37 per cent to 37 per cent). But among those who had been here longer, the Tories held a smashing 45 per cent over the Liberals’ 24 per cent.
The trend also seems to bely claims that Canada’s recent spate of sky-high immigration is part of a cynical Liberal bid to pack Canada with sympathetic new voters.
Immigration rates remain at all-time highs, with more than a million newcomers entering Canada each year.
In an interview last month with The Hub, Jason Kenney — a former Conservative immigration minister — speculated that the intake was done in part for political reasons.
“They imagined, with these high levels, both on the permanent and temporary side, that they’re creating a new permanent Liberal voting bloc, and inversely, a political trap for the Conservatives,” he said.
As to why new and non-white Canadians are leaning rightwards, it appears to be driven in part by social issues, be they permissive addiction policies, lenient criminal justice or even unsustainably high immigration.
A November 2023 poll by Leger for Postmedia, for instance, asked Canadians whether they endorsed the slogan “diversity is our strength.”
A majority turned out to be skeptical of the motto, saying that diversity can also cause “problems.” And this sentiment was slightly stronger among non-white respondents (56 per cent) than it was among white respondents (55 per cent).
IN OTHER NEWS
CBC president Catherine Tait made another appearance before the parliamentary heritage committee on Monday. Prior appearances have usually resulted in her being yelled at by Conservative and NDP MPs for continuing to collect bonuses while laying off employees. And this one was no exception: Tait continued to maintain that she wasn’t actually collecting bonuses (it’s “performance pay”), and that everybody there was really mean to her. “I would say that there is a clear effort on the part of members of this committee to vilify and to discredit me and to discredit the organization,” she said.
A foreign publication mentioned us! Unfortunately, it’s yet another article about how acute Canadian political failures are a warning to the rest of the developed world. Canada’s Trudeau trap, published in The Economist, calls the prime minister a “toxic liability,” and warns the world’s “mainstream leaders” that high-minded virtue can only go so far if you aren’t good at running a government. “Government virtue ultimately alienates many more people than it inspires,” it wrote.
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