Tories Hold Lead Over Liberals, Canadians Report Limited Trust In Institutions: Poll

The Conservative party is maintaining a steady lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, a new poll suggests, at a time when Canadians are reporting limited trust in their institutions.

Pierre Poilievre’s Tories are 14 percentage points ahead of the governing party, according to the survey by polling firm Leger. Forty per cent of respondents said they would vote Conservative, 26% Liberal and 17% NDP if an election were held that day.

The poll conducted from Friday to Sunday also suggested that people in Canada are generally more trusting of institutions than their neighbours to the south — especially when it comes to federal election administrators, the countries’ top courts and the police.

Nonetheless, majorities of Canadians said they don’t trust federal legislative bodies, provincial governments, the media and large corporations.

A total of 1,632 Canadian respondents participated in the web survey, along with 1,002 Americans. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered truly random samples.

Nearly two-thirds of Canadian respondents, or 63%, said they are dissatisfied with the federal government led by Trudeau.

That result was recorded in the days after the prime minister’s announcement that his government would institute a temporary pause in applying the carbon price to home heating oil — the Liberals’ first climbdown on their carbon-pricing policy and one that comes amid heavy Conservative emphasis on Poilievre’s “axe the tax” campaign.

Poilievre is in the lead when people are asked who they see as the best potential prime minister, with 29% of Canadians choosing him, 19% choosing Trudeau and 15% choosing NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Another 13% said no current federal leader would make a good prime minister.

The poll suggested that among Canadian institutions, police services are the most trusted, with 73% of respondents reporting they trust police. In the U.S., that number dips to 59%.

The second-most trusted in a list of major institutions was Elections Canada, which has the trust of 69% of Canadians.

In the U.S., where many politicians cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election that ousted Donald Trump, only 40% trust the Federal Election Commission.

Canada’s far less politicized Supreme Court earned the trust of 66% of Canadian respondents, while Americans reported considerably less trust for their Supreme Court at 45%.

The survey questions did not ask for respondents’ degree of trust in institutions — only whether or not they trusted them.

At a time of high inflation when politicians including Poilievre have criticized the Bank of Canada for its macroeconomic policies, it still earns the trust of a little more than half of Canadians, or 57%.

A similar number, or 55%, trust their municipal administration, while 53% trust federal public servants.

Slightly less than half, or 49%, of Canadian respondents said they trust the United Nations.

That’s a little more than the trust in the House of Commons Speaker, at 45%, weeks after former Speaker Anthony Rota resigned amid controversy. Rota had recognized a war veteran for applause who fought on the side of the Nazis in the Second World War, during a visit by Ukraine’s president.

Even fewer respondents reported trusting the House of Commons itself, at 44%, still considerably more than the 28% of Americans who trust their own House of Representatives.

Forty-three per cent of Canadians reported trust in their provincial governments, compared to 45% of Americans trusting their state government — the only category in which slightly more Americans trusted an institution.

On the lower end of the scale, 40% of Canadians said they trust the media, 37% trust the Senate, 36% trust the Prime Minister’s Office and 28% trust large corporations.