Immigrants to B.C. report the lowest sense of belonging to Canada than in any other province in the country, according to a new study from Statistics Canada.
Results of the nearly 14,000-person survey show 53 per cent of immigrants to B.C. reported a very strong sense of belonging to Canada, 10 percentage points lower than in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces — the two regions where immigrants reported feeling most at home in the country.
“Taken together, this evidence shows that immigrants in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces have especially favourable views about belonging to Canada,” the national statistics agency concluded.
Andy Yan, a director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, said the study raises questions over a rising cost of living, and whether once binding national institutions — such as the health-care system — are powerful enough to soften economic blows.
“What is the new Canadian Dream?” questioned Yan. “It's a warning sign of the kind of quiet desperation many British Columbians are perhaps feeling.”
Suzanne Huot, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, says that if the numbers are accurate and continue, it could have consequences for Canada’s immigration policies going forward.
“If people come but don't stay because they don't feel a sense of belonging, then that defeats the goals of the immigration policies to begin with, which is really to have people become involved members of their communities,” said Huot.
The report comes amid record immigration rates. Last year marked the first 12-month period in Canada’s history where its population grew by more than a million people.
The 2.7 per cent population growth rate in 2022 is the highest since 1957, when the height of the post-war baby boom led the country to grow by more than 3.3 per cent. More than six decades later, 95.9 per cent of demographic growth came from new arrivals.
Earlier this month, Canada’s population ticked past 40 million people at a pace that puts Canada’s population growth among the top 20 in the world. If that growth rate were to continue, the country's population could double within 26 years, according to StatCan.
Huot says that B.C. faces a confluence of factors that may be contributing to immigrants feeling a lower sense of belonging to Canada.
She said many people take advantage of the province’s natural beauty, but that some of those activities can be done alone or are prohibitively expensive for newcomers. Part of the disconnect to Canada could be political and may be tied to a wider sense of Western alienation from the business and political capitals of Toronto and Ottawa.
“There is this sense of isolation, not just geographically, but also from the centre of power,” Huot said.
‘Easy stuff can really set you off’
Six years ago this week, Vishad Deeplaul came to Canada from South Africa with his husband and son. When they first arrived in Coquitlam, he remembers struggling with a series of small but uncomfortable adjustments.
“Easy stuff can really set you off,” he said. “Not being able to find the groceries you normally buy, not being able to find the coffee you like.”
Deeplaul remembers one moment in those first two years when he brought his son to get a haircut.
“We were so used to a barber cutting our hair Sundays for five and a half years,” he said. “No fault to the barber… but I remember leaving there so upset, coming home and I told Vishad (my husband) I want to go back.”
Past research has shown sense of belonging is strongly impacted by time spent in one's new home — the longer an individual stays, the more likely they are to feel connected to their new surroundings.
At the same time, the StatCan researchers noted racialized immigrants who are discriminated against face big hurdles when it comes to feeling at home. For others who came to Canada through a special admissions program to fill an economic need, getting a full-time job has an especially big impact on their sense of belonging, the report notes.
At one point or another, Deeplaul said he and his family faced a number of hurdles as they settled into their new lives in B.C. But within two years, Deeplaul said his son had made friends, while he had joined the school Parent Advisory Council and found a job.
One of the biggest turning points, said the father, was when the family managed to save enough money to buy a townhouse.
“Owning your home means it's your home,” said Deeplaul, who works at the City of Burnaby as their first senior manager of equity, diversity and inclusion. “And it's a big deal to a lot of people who've owned a home before but then coming to a place where you can't afford to does make a really, really big difference.”
Timing of study raises questions of long-term accuracy
The timing of the survey — between 2020 and early 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions — raises questions over whether the results will hold over time, said Nathan Lauster, a UBC associate professor of sociology researching housing, demographics and migration.
“COVID times were weird,” said Lauster. “We know there was a really high rate of hate crimes out in B.C., a lot of targeting of Chinese immigrants in particular.”
Even without outright discrimination, newly arrived immigrants faced the prospect of starting over in a relatively closed society, disconnected from the normal rhythms of life.
When Deeplaul’s old friends immigrated to Coquitlam in 2021, he said pandemic restrictions made it that much harder for their son to befriend other children at school.
“You couldn't make friends at school. They couldn't drop the kids at school. You couldn't go to restaurants, go to parks — all these little pieces, so it's very hard to connect,” Deeplaul said.
Native-born British Columbians equally alienated from Canada
Immigrants to Canada will form the backbone of the country’s population growth for decades to come. And while it’s not clear how much insight can be drawn from a study carried out during period of great upheaval, it does raise some important questions, said Lauster.
The StatCan researchers adjusted their numbers to account for everything from time spent in Canada to age, education, as well as perceptions of discrimination and unemployment rates.
Still, B.C. stood out among all other provinces, with the province’s immigrants “about 11 percentage points less likely to report a very strong sense of belonging to Canada than immigrants in Ontario.”
Perhaps more telling, said Lauster, is the data collected on native-born Canadians. The report says immigrants in Ontario were more likely to report a very strong sense of belonging to Canada than those born the province.
And in B.C., there was almost no gap between immigrants and Canadian-born residents when it came to their sense of belonging in Canada — a finding Lauster described as “striking.”
Huot speculated people in British Columbians may just be happy living in their own neighbourhoods without developing a strong emotional connection to the idea of Canada.
“Maybe people are just content to do their own thing,” she said.
