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Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

Freelance journalist
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Visiting the Global Migration Institute

Spring 2026

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a freelance journalist based in Montreal, Quebec. As a correspondent at Al Jazeera English online, she writes news, features and analysis stories, with a particular focus on Indigenous rights, environmental justice and global conflict.

Jillian has reported from more than a dozen countries, including Israel-Palestine, Turkey, Mauritania, Lebanon, and Morocco, and contributed to several major international news outlets. She is a three-time Amnesty International Canada media awards winner for her coverage of environmental issues and Indigenous rights in North America. She also has been awarded multiple grants and fellowships, including from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Research focus while a Bridging Divides Fellow

Canada has long billed itself as a place that welcomes people from around the world. Yet in recent years, alongside rising global hostility against immigrants, Canadian attitudes towards immigration have soured amid affordable housing shortages and soaring costs of living. Recent surveys and opinion polling have found that a majority of Canadians now believe Canada is accepting too many immigrants. The 2025 federal election saw most of Canada's major political parties vow to curtail visas and maintain or increase strict immigration caps. And since taking office, Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government has introduced legislation that rights groups say will strip protections from refugees and asylum seekers, and "grant ministers mass immigration status-cancellation powers".

Against that backdrop, can Canada still be considered the welcoming place it has long billed itself as? What factors have contributed to shifting public perceptions on immigration and the hardening of government policies? And what does all this mean for the future of the country – and for the migrant and refugee communities most affected?