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With a minority government in Ottawa, a federal election is possible at any time – triggered either deliberately or by accident. This encourages political observers to check opinion polls as often as regular people check the weather. The slightest movement for one party or another sparks more speculation about whether the government is about to fall.
Let’s take a step back and look at what trends we have seen in our public opinion research over the past year that are encouraging, either for the government or for the opposition. What do these findings suggest about their prospects for 2026?
Immigration
Rarely has the tide turned so decisively as it did recently in opinions about immigration. The proportion agreeing there is too much immigration more than doubled between 2022 and 2024, to 58 from 27 per cent – a trend which reflected badly on the Liberals.
However, there is now a glimmer of hope for the Carney government because this sentiment stabilized in 2025. A majority (56 per cent) still agrees there is too much immigration, but the recent federal caps may have prevented a further decline.
There is another wrinkle: the widening partisan gap. Supporters of the federal Conservative Party (82 per cent) are now twice as likely as Liberal Party supporters (40 per cent) to agree that immigration levels are too high.
But this opens a risk for Conservatives. As much as they have benefitted from drawing attention to the previous Trudeau government’s mishandling of the immigration system, they stand to lose if they allow themselves to be framed as just another of the world’s anti-immigration parties on the right. As the number of new arrivals continues to fall, calls to close the door even tighter may no longer resonate with most Canadians.
Energy and the environment
Public opinion is trending in Carney’s direction as his government pivots to an energy superpower agenda from the Trudeau climate change focus. Given the loud political fallout from the deal with Alberta on pipeline construction, it is notable that this trend is especially evident in B.C., where the provincial government and some Indigenous groups loudly condemned the agreement.
When it comes to balancing economic and environmental priorities, the largest group of Canadians remain staunchly in the middle, rooting for Canada to fulfil its potential as an energy superpower while also reducing CO2 emissions.
That said, over the past several years, the proportion that favours forgetting about emissions targets, and boosting oil and gas exports instead, has slowly crept up to 29 per cent in 2025 from 19 per cent in 2021. The change in B.C. has been a bit larger over the same period – to 33 from 18 per cent.
At the same time, the proportion of Canadians who think it is a high priority to meet the Paris climate change agreement targets has dropped 10 percentage points (to 31 per cent in 2025 from 41 per cent in 2021).
Nationally, the proportion saying we need to prioritize jobs in the oil and gas industry has increased by six percentage points (to 37 from 31 per cent). But again, the changes are larger in B.C. (up 10 percentage points), where the commitment to the Paris agreement targets has dropped by 21 percentage points to 28 per cent in 2025 from 49 per cent in 2021.
The upshot of these changes is that the gap in public opinion between residents of B.C. and Alberta has been all but eliminated. This is something that both Prime Minister Mark Carney and B.C. Premier David Eby seem to have grasped, either because they read our reports or (more likely) because they have their own pollsters to show them similar results, or (even more likely) because they are politicians who can sense when the public mood is shifting.
External relations
It doesn’t take a polling genius to tell you that Canadians almost universally oppose our country becoming America’s 51st state. What’s striking about the trends in public opinion, however, is not just the opposition to annexation. It is the larger sense that we are facing an ever-more hostile world.
Canadians still believe we can count on our traditional European allies, especially the U.K. and France. But the idea that China or India offer interesting Plan Bs in the face of American threats to trade has fizzled. The proportion of Canadians who see China as our friend has been cut in half since 2013 (to 25 from 49 per cent). The proportion with the same view of India has also dropped sharply, to 39 from 61 per cent.
Yet the most striking change by far relates to perceptions of the United States. In 2013, before anyone but Donald Trump himself dreamed that he might one day be president, 89 per cent of Canadians said the U.S. was our friend.
By the end of Trump’s first term, that had fallen to 60 per cent. Now, in Trump’s second term, it stands at only 36 per cent. Canadians are now about as likely to consider the U.S. as a friend of Canada as they are India. They are now also as likely to consider the U.S. an enemy as they are China.
What this suggests is that voters are particularly receptive to many of Carney’s talking points: that the world in which we live has fundamentally changed; that the era of ever-closer alignment with the United States has ended; and that we must get used to relying on ourselves to drive our prosperity and security. This openness to buy what Carney is selling currently is the government’s biggest advantage over the opposition.
Generation gaps
It’s not all bad news for the opposition.
The Conservative Party’s focus on affordability continues to resonate with younger Canadians. When asked what issue was the most important in choosing which party to vote for in the April federal election, voters under 40 were more than twice as likely as voters 65 and older to mention the economy or the cost of living.
Later in 2025, Canadians 18 to 29 remained much more likely to mention inflation or the cost of housing, rather than Trump and tariffs, as the most important issues facing the country (the figures were 30 per cent and four per cent respectively). Among those 60 and above, inflation and housing were edged out by Trump and tariffs (17 per cent to 19 per cent).
This age difference is perhaps best illustrated by a question about trust in the prime minister. Between 2023 (Trudeau) and 2025 (Carney), the proportion of Canadians expressing a lot of trust in the prime minister rebounded by nine percentage points (to 32 from 23 per cent).
But this rebound was much more pronounced among those 60 and older – a 21-perdcentage-point increase (to 44 from 23 per cent) Among those 18 to 29, there was virtually no change (to 24 from 23 per cent).
Because older Canadians vote in greater numbers, the advantage may still lie with Carney. But at some point, today’s grandparents may notice that their grandchildren feel stuck. Should the Baby Boomers be overtaken with intergenerational empathy, the winds may start to blow in the opposition’s sails again.
National unity
If a prime minster’s top priority should be keeping the federation together, it might seem that the current occupant of that position is in trouble. There are separatists on the horizon – not only in Quebec, but in Alberta too.
But as Ford Prefect would say: don’t panic. The rise in popularity of the Parti Québécois in Quebec has little to do with support for sovereignty. In fact, under the radar over the past decade, Quebec has emerged as the jurisdiction whose residents are the most supportive of Canada’s political system. I kid you not.
Meanwhile, in Alberta, the proportion expressing feelings of alienation – for instance, saying their province is not treated with the respect it deserves in Canada – is actually trending downward (a gradual change since 2019 that preceded the recent deal on pipelines). If there is any lesson that public opinion research in Canada has to share, it is to be very wary of claims that the country is more divided than ever.
Yet risks remain for both the government and the opposition.
For the opposition, the risk comes from lagging behind the country’s increasing sense of national pride today.
The strength of pride in being Canadian – even in the face of Trump’s expansionist rhetoric – does remain more muted today than in previous decades. Some would argue this is down to Liberal woke-ists who convinced too many Canadians that we should apologize for the country’s very existence.
But in fact, it is Conservatives who are more reticent to express national pride – partly because many of that party’s supporters find it difficult to celebrate a country that keeps reelecting Liberal governments.
If they wish to return to power, Conservative strategists would be wise to put their minds to the task of better separating their feelings about Liberals from their feelings about the country.
The Liberal government faces its own challenge. The lack of enthusiasm for sovereignty in Quebec should not be confused with a conversion to the federalist cause.
Should the Parti Québécois return to power as expected in 2026, the case for Canada will have to be made – and it will have to be made in French. It remains to be seen if the current prime minister’s skill set, especially in terms of language, in defending Canada in the face of external threats is good enough to prevail in the event of a third referendum.
We are all drawn to the drama of the polls that track the weekly ups and downs in the popularity of leaders and parties. But the last few years have been marked by deeper and more enduring shifts in public opinion as well, on issues such as immigration, the environment, foreign policy and even national unity.
The current federal government has managed to stay on the right side of enough of these shifts to remain in power, but the Liberals are not without their vulnerabilities. Public opinion can resemble an iceberg. The top layer catches the eye, but it’s what lies beneath the surface that might one day sink you.
