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Most Canadians don’t seem to have the foggiest notion of how many immigrants and refugees this country admits every year.

When asked the question, during Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s 2013-14 annual tracking survey, 43 per cent of the Canadian adults polled wouldn’t even hazard a guess. Fully one third thought the number was less than 100,000 a year.

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In fact, for the past decade, Canada has opened its doors to about 250,000 immigrants and refugees a year. (Only nine per cent of those surveyed suggested a number remotely close to that.)

Ignorance of the facts, however, didn’t stop most of the 3,016 participants polled by Harris/Decima from answering when asked whether there were too many, too few or about the right number of immigrants coming to Canada every year.

Twenty-six per cent said there were too many, 10 per cent said too few and 52 per cent said the number was about right. The rest said they didn’t know.