With free trade in North America dominating headlines and ongoing concern over the rise of populism across Western democracies, it\u2019s more important than ever for policy-makers to fully understand what Canadians think about free trade and globalization.<\/p>\n
From recent surveys, we know Canadians are positive about free trade and are generally supportive of NAFTA. This fairly benign state of affairs might surprise people who remember the great free-trade election of 1988<\/a> or the 2001 demonstrations in Quebec City against the proposed free trade area of the Americas.<\/p>\n Can it be that Canadians are more relaxed now about trade agreements and globalization than they were at the beginning of this century? They seem less worried, yes, but should we expect a retreat into populism and disengagement from the world like that seen in other rich countries?<\/p>\n Based on our analysis of Canadian opinion, that\u2019s unlikely. But there is some risk, as several of the attributes associated with populist voting are present in Canada.<\/p>\n It is difficult to see trends and understand underlying attitudes using opinion surveys on trade, because surveys so often ask questions driven by the concerns of the moment. We sought to get<\/a> to the heart of Canadians\u2019 beliefs about trade and globalization through an analysis of a 2017 survey by the Mowat Centre<\/a> that replicated a set of questions from another survey conducted in 2001<\/a> by the Centre for Research and Information on Canada.<\/p>\n Not all the survey questions from 2001 were asked again in 2017. Where exact replicas of each question did not exist, we either used closely related questions or we excluded them. It is also important to consider that while the 2001 data covers all of Canada, the 2017 data includes just Ontario and Quebec. However, regional variation in the 2001 data is sufficiently small that we don\u2019t consider this limitation to be serious.<\/p>\n Regarding globalization, we focused on the following two questions that were asked in 2001 and again in 2017:<\/p>\n When people respond to questions about trade or globalization, it is always possible that they are evaluating liberalized trade in general; the content of particular agreements; or such attributes of globalization as the Internet, the spread of disease and increased travel. The only way for a researcher to understand what the question means to respondents is to see how they answer other questions, and to see which ones tie in with answers to the initial question. The literature on public opinion suggests that peoples\u2019 beliefs about trade policy do not float freely, changing with the latest Twitter storms; they are connected to wider values.<\/p>\n\n