Young Canadians Feel Least Satisfied With Canada: Nanos Poll

Canadians’ satisfaction with Canada as a country continues to decline, especially when it comes to perceptions of our political institutions, and young Canadians have the bleakest view of the nation of any age group. .

(Data source: Nanos Research)

A new national poll by Nanos Research found that about two in three Canadians (64%) say they are satisfied with Canada as a country.

This is a 10% decrease from just two years ago, when 74% of Canadians expressed satisfaction with the country.

As for the average score – or the score group average – we’re at 6.6 out of 10 now, up from 7.2 in 2021.

• Average rating 2023: 6.6
• Average score 2022: 6.8
• Average score 2021: 7.2

“[It’s] not a good score,” Nik Nanos, Nanos Research Chair, said on the latest episode of CTV News Trend Line. “What we’re seeing is basically a decline, or a decline, in the proportion of Canadians who feel satisfied with the country.

YOUNG CANADIANS

This decline is even more pronounced when looking at Canadians under 35, for whom the score drops to 5.8.

“Put that in context… the national report card would currently be a C. Canadians would give Canada a C on the satisfaction front. But for people under 35, that C grade drops to D,” Nanos said. .

Politically, this could be bad news for minority Liberals, who are trending lower in support in the weekly Nanos ballot tracker.

The poor score for the 35-and-under age group should be particularly troubling for the Liberals, who garnered a huge turnout from young Canadians in the 2015 federal election, Nanos said. In this election, the turnout of voters aged 18 to 24 increased by more than 18 percentage points to 57.1%.

“I think if you said fast forward from 2015 to 2023, that young people would be the most pessimistic, young people would be the least satisfied, you would probably be very surprised,” Nanos said.

“Young people are generally the most optimistic and positive because they are in good health, they are starting to find a job and they are at the beginning of their income cycle…so these numbers for [young] Canadians and their level of satisfaction are absolutely brutal.”

THE “BROKEN” TALE

And this cloud of pessimism has not gone unnoticed by politicians, including Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who appears to be using it to gain an advantage. According to Nanos, when Poilievre says Canada looks “broken” – as he did in November last year and repeated it in January – it’s a message that resonates with Canadians.

The strategy seems to be to shift the blame for our sky-high inflation-fueled grocery bills, our overburdened health care system, and everything that weighs on Canadians at the feet of the Prime Minister.

Poilievre is trying to portray the Liberals as directly “responsible for breaking Canada up,” Nanos said, a tactic very different from opposition leaders in the past.

“Usually they just say that the government in place is not doing a very good job, that they are incompetent and [are] drop it,” Nanos said. “In this particular case, what Pierre Poilievre is saying is that the Liberals are specifically responsible for breaking Canada up, and that’s a whole new level of rhetoric we’re seeing from the opposition bench.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for his part, did not turn the other cheek to Poilievre’s accusation.

“Let me be clear for the record: Canada is not broken,” he said in a December speech, reversing Poilievre’s assertion while accusing the Conservative leader of amplifying the conspiracy theories and avoid difficult questions from reporters.

HOW WE ARE TARGET OUR NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The Nanos poll also asked what Canadians think of our key institutions and how they contribute to Canada, including those in politics, education, health care, law enforcement and arts organizations. and cultural.

The poll found that Canadians think our universities (average score of 7.3) and our health care system (7.0) are the biggest contributors to Canada. But they rate our political institutions – including the House of Commons (5.7), Prime Minister (4.9), Senate (4.1) and Governor General (3.6), as having the lowest scores. further down the list of contributors.

(Data source: Nanos Research)

Watch the full episode of Trend Line in our video player at the top of this article. You can also listen in our audio player below, or wherever you get your podcasts. The next episode will be released on Wednesday, March 29, the day after the release of the federal budget.