It seems that Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill has an audience for his disingenuous campaign against immigration levels. According to polling by Abacus Data, \u201cmanaging population growth\u201d is a growing issue in the provincial election campaign – and Tim Houston\u2019s record on the file isn\u2019t getting high ratings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ontario-based Abacus recently set up an Atlantic region office in Halifax and marked the occasion with a horse race poll, as well as a closer look at the impact of population growth on political opinion. The former still had Tim Houston\u2019s PCs well in the lead after week one of the campaign, but the population growth stuff is intriguing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although it trails well behind health care, affordability and housing as a vote-determining issue, population growth has moved ahead of issues like the economy, climate change and Houston\u2019s favourite, defending Nova Scotia\u2019s interests in Ottawa. And while respondents – 600 surveyed from Oct. 28-31 – seemed to align with party preferences on who could best deal with the issue the verdict on Houston was harsh. Over half said the Premier is doing a poor (28 percent) or terrible job (24 percent) versus only 12 percent who said excellent or good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Abacus report also fired another volley in Houston\u2019s direction – \u201csome national polling we did this summer also tells us that concern about population growth is higher in Nova Scotia than it is in any other Canadian province.\u201d Last week\u2019s release from Abacus didn\u2019t provide any details on the nature or exact timing of that particular poll – but for what it\u2019s worth, 57 percent of Nova Scotians think their community is growing too quickly, well ahead of the next two provinces on the list, British Columbia and Alberta at 47 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As discussed here<\/a> a<\/em><\/strong>nd here<\/em><\/strong><\/a> both Churchill and Houston are guilty of using immigrants and asylum seekers for political gain. Churchill has seized on Houston\u2019s musings about doubling the Province\u2019s population by 2060 to blame him for immigration levels putting pressure on housing and the health care and education systems. In response,\u00a0 Houston has introduced a red herring – accusing Churchill of supporting a non-existent federal plan to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Houston\u2019s asylum seekers claim appears to be completely bogus, Churchill is guilty as well of leaving out several salient points, chiefly the impact that the post-pandemic influx of temporary work and student visas has had on Nova Scotia\u2019s population. That inflow – accounting for nearly half of the 51,111 increase in population from July 2022 to July 2024 – peaked a year ago and has been dropping sharply ever since. Also missing from Churchill\u2019s narrative is any acknowledgement that the spike in non-permanent residents is the responsibility of the federal government, which now is putting the brakes on handing out temporary work and\u00a0 students visas. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The drop in non-permanent residents, combined with a steep decline in interprovincial migration has already slowed the rate of increase in Nova Scotia\u2019s population, as the table below shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Population Increase by category July 1 2022-24<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Statistics Canada Quarterly Population Estimates<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the table shows, following an increase of 31,223 from July 2022 to July 2023, the increase dropped below 20,000 over the next 12 months. Updated quarterly numbers will not be available until next month, but based on StatsCanada\u2019s population clock, the increase since July is consistent with the lower growth pattern established in 2023-4. If there ever was an immigration crisis, it seems to have peaked, a possibility being ignored by some politicians.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside from raising the issue and reminding voters of Houston\u2019s \u201cdouble-the-population\u201d goal, the Liberals lack a coherent plan for achieving their \u201csustainable rate\u201d of population growth. They say they want to limit landings to 7,000 a year, while focussing on professionals needed in areas such as healthcare, education and trades. However, by ignoring both the non-permanent resident factor and the over-riding federal responsibility for immigration, their plan is as vapid as Houston\u2019s pipe dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what the plan lacks in policy coherence, it more than makes up for in cynical political finesse. As much as he likes to tout his independence from the Conservative Party of Canada, Tim Houston depends on the support of many of the same voters as the Poilievre-led party. Another Abacus Data poll, this one conducted in early October involving 1,915 participants nation-wide, found that while 53 percent expressed negative views of immigration, the number rose to 70 percent among Conservative voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because most conservatives – large \u201cc\u201d and small – are negative about immigration, Houston\u2019s population growth pledge could lose him support from conservative swing voters, likely to Churchill\u2019s benefit. As last week\u2019s report from Abacus put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPopulation growth is emerging as a ballot-box issue in Nova Scotia\u2019s provincial election. At the end of the first week of campaigning, managing population growth is not as important an issue to eligible voters as fixing healthcare, affordability, improving housing, or cutting taxes, but it is definitely influencing the way some voters are thinking about their political choices, particularly those who see \u2018a lot\u2019 of growth in their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Houston has shown he is aware of the emergence, and maybe even the verdict that he is doing a \u201cpoor\u201d or \u201cterrible\u201d job on the issue. One response was to engage in combat with the straw man he created around the 6,000 asylum seekers. Another was to claim that\u201cwe have been strategic and focussed\u2026 so the only immigration that can come into the province at this time is if they are a skilled trades worker or a health care worker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we are left with is the inference that there’s no room in Nova Scotia for asylum seekers or anyone else who does not meet our narrow specifications. That sends a poor message to the 50,000-plus international immigrants who have arrived in recent years and don\u2019t fit into the strategy, or to others who may be considering coming here in the future. Overall it seems like a cruel and self-defeating way of dealing with negative perceptions\u00a0about immigration and population growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems that Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill has an audience for his disingenuous campaign against immigration levels. According to polling by Abacus Data, \u201cmanaging population growth\u201d is a growing issue in the provincial election campaign – and Tim Houston\u2019s record on the file isn\u2019t getting high ratings. Ontario-based Abacus recently set up an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nova-scotia-politics","tag-immigration","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions\/3475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/td>2022-23<\/td> 2023-24<\/td><\/tr> Net immigration<\/td> 11,830<\/td> 13,247<\/td><\/tr> Net non-permanent immigration<\/td> 16,529<\/td> 8,745<\/td><\/tr> Net Interprovincial migration<\/td> 6,989<\/td> 2,252<\/td><\/tr> Births-deaths<\/td> -4,125<\/td> -4,356<\/td><\/tr> Total Increase<\/td> 31,223<\/td> 19,888<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n