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Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Canadians feeling better about how Ottawa and the provinces work together, survey suggests
OTTAWA — Ahead of a meeting between the prime minister and premiers this week, a survey has found 'significant improvements' in the way Canadians feel about how well Ottawa and the provinces work together. According to a report on the state of Canada's federation from the Environics Institute and five other organizations, 52 per cent of Canadians feel like their governments work very well or somewhat well together, compared to 39 per cent who felt that way when the same survey was conducted in 2024. Conversely, 41 per cent of Canadians now feel like their governments are not working well together — either not very well or not well at all — compared to 54 per cent who felt that way one year ago. 'What's changed since last year? You have a new (federal) leader, but you also have this new sense of urgency, where I think the public's patience for government finger-pointing at each other has probably gone way down because the stakes have gone way up,' said Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute, on the ever-escalating Canada-U.S. trade dispute. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country's premiers will convene in Huntsville following U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to slap 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports by Aug. 1 if a trade agreement between the nations is not reached by then. The survey found that Canadians' feelings about intergovernmental relations improved in most parts of the country outside of the North, where opinions were already more positive than in other regions. Compared to 2024 figures, Saskatchewan boasted the largest increase, where the proportion of those who felt satisfied by federal-provincial collaboration more than doubled. In Alberta and Quebec, however, the number of Canadians who felt the federal Liberals and their provincial governments did not work well together still outweighed those who felt the opposite. The survey was conducted between May 1 and June 16 with 5,391 Canadians, with 90 per cent of responses collected online and the remainder by telephone. Because the majority of the survey was conducted online, the Environics Institute did not calculate a margin of error because online polls, despite being representative, cannot be considered truly random. For the first time in the annual survey's seven-year-history, the Environics Institute also asked respondents whether they trust the federal government or their provincial government more when it comes to handling international trade relations. The report notes that 42 per cent of Canadians are more likely to trust the federal government on that file, which is triple the 14 per cent of those who trust their provincial government more. Levels of trust were highest in Quebec at 46 per cent, and lowest in the Prairie provinces at 38 per cent. Ottawa does not enjoy that same level of trust when it comes to other portfolios. 'After three consecutive years of increases, there has been a drop in the proportions trusting neither the federal nor their provincial government to deal with other key issues such as health care, climate change, immigration or the economy,' the report states. The proportion of Canadians who did not trust either Ottawa or their provincial government to address climate change, for example, dropped by seven percentage points from last year. 'This change follows the removal of the federal consumer carbon tax after the change of prime minister earlier this year,' the report noted. The survey also looked at supporters of provincial conservative parties in the prairies compared to those in Ontario, and found that of those who backed Alberta's United Conservative Party, the Saskatchewan Party and Manitoba's Progressive Conservatives, 68 per cent had a negative view of intergovernmental relations, while 27 per cent had a positive assessment. Meanwhile, 40 per cent of supporters of Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives had a negative view of those relations, with 56 per cent considering the relationship between provinces and the federal Liberals to be positive. Ford, a key ally to Carney, opted not to aid Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives, with whom he has a frosty relationship, in the recent federal election campaign.
CTV News
01-07-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Will this be the most patriotic Canada Day ever?
The Canadian flag will be flown high this Canada Day holiday, after repeated threats made by U.S. president Trump to make Canada the 51st state. Oh, Canada. For years, the world has viewed our country in a certain light. Terms like polite, kind and nice come to mind. But between tariffs and annexation talk, Canada's evolving relationship with the United States seems to be changing attitudes, not just about Americans, but how we view our own country as well. Research released from the Environics Institute suggests Canadian pride and optimism is spiking in the months following the inauguration of U.S president Donald Trump. 'The sense of being proud to be Canadian was getting more muted,' Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute told CTV News Toronto. Environics surveyed nearly 2,000 Canadians in May 2025. A key finding noted a significant rise in nationalism following what Environics described as a 'bottoming out' that began with COVID-19 lockdowns, culminating in September 2024. 'There was a 20 point drop in that strong feeling of national pride from 73 to 53 per cent over a few years. Now, that doesn't mean that half of the country didn't feel proud to be Canadian, right? They felt somewhat proud or they weren't sure,' explained Parkin. 'Up to 86 per cent of Canadians (now) say they feel somewhat proud to be Canadian. And there's a boost in the proportion who feel very proud.' The sense of national pride fluctuates according to region, with only 46 per cent of Quebecers describing themselves as 'very proud' compared to 67 per cent of other Canadians. Ontario and the Atlantic provinces reported the highest levels of patriotism. And while the numbers paint a rosy picture in some respects, Parkin says Canadians' opinions about the overall direction of the country remain lukewarm, at best. 'There's still more people who are dissatisfied than satisfied. We are more satisfied than we were last year. But it didn't flip completely. We didn't go from worried about inflation, worried about national unity to suddenly being not worried about any of these things. We know that political dissatisfaction affects these numbers. So if the new government is not successful at recharging the Canadian economy, and with some other issues, these numbers can go up and down.'
Hamilton Spectator
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
Very proud to be Canadian? That's less likely now for supporters of one party, survey suggests
OTTAWA — With U.S President Donald Trump making economic and expansionist threats against his northern neighbours, a new survey suggests that pride in being Canadian has increased among supporters of all federal parties — except Conservatives. The number of Canadians who feel proud of their country has rebounded overall, according to research shared exclusively with the Star from the Environics Institute, with 62 per cent now indicating that they are very proud to be Canadian, compared to 53 per cent who said the same last September. 'This change marks the first time that this measure has increased by more than a few percentage points from one survey to the next, since our tracking first began in 1985,' a report outlining the survey's findings notes. But when the results are broken down by federal party support, Conservative voters bucked the trend posted by Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois supporters, who all showed increased pride in their national identity. Seventy-seven per cent of Liberal supporters now say they are very proud to be Canadian, up five points from last fall, while the proportion of NDP supporters who felt the same way grew from 61 to 68 per cent. The number of Bloc supporters who felt very proud of being Canadian, meanwhile, grew from 30 per cent to 42 per cent, although the report notes that the finding should be treated with caution due to a smaller number of responses from those who backed the traditionally separatist party. By contrast, fewer Conservative voters said they were very proud of being Canadian compared to last fall, dropping from 46 to 43 per cent. The current number is the lowest level logged by Conservative-leaning supporters since the research institute first began tracking this question in 1985. The Environics Institute launched the survey after this spring's federal election, which followed a campaign defined by how parties platformed Canada's strengths against the backdrop of Trump's aggression. The institute released the results of a companion survey last week, which suggested that Canadian public sentiment toward the U.S. had plunged to new lows. The new survey was conducted via telephone with 2,000 Canadians from May 5 to 18, with a sample of this size producing a margin of error within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Andrew Parkin, the institute's executive director, said pride in Canada has seen the steepest decline overall among Conservative backers. 'The Conservatives today are about half as likely as Conservatives in 2010 to have strong pride in being Canadian,' Parkin said. But he added that the results aren't necessarily surprising, because supporters within the blue tent are contending with an election result for which they don't have much enthusiasm. 'The things that they think are wrong about the direction that the country was heading (in) are not going to change because the government didn't change, or at least the party in government didn't change,' Parkin said. Parkin said a result he did find surprising was that while pride in being Canadian remains lowest in Quebec, the province is the only part of the country where the proportion of Canadians who feel very proud of their country is higher, not lower, than it was in 2010. Compared to 2024, strong pride in being Canadian jumped eight points in Quebec. Alberta, where secessionist sentiment has recently surfaced in some quarters, had a seven-point increase. Also of note, Parkin said, was how strong pride in Canadian identity saw a resurgence in every region of the country, aside from Atlantic Canada, which dropped from 64 per cent in 2024 to 62 per cent now. 'The fact that it's not the highest in Atlantic Canada, where traditionally, going back, it would have been among the highest, I think (is) worth noticing,' he said.
