Most Canadians agree ‘Canada is broken’ — and they’re angry about it: National poll

A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run, a national opinion poll says.

But before settling on the easy image of old, malcontent men skewing the survey, consider this: A higher percentage of women agreed Canada is broken than did men, and more in the youngest age brackets than among the oldest.

Nor is it just Albertans, famous for their distrust of Ottawa, or Quebecers, where public opinion often deviates from the rest of Canada.

Yes, the sentiment is higher in Western Canada than in the East, but a solid majority of respondents in every measured region agreed that everything feels broken right now, according to the Postmedia-Leger national poll.

Two-thirds of those asked (67 per cent) agreed everything feels broken — almost half of those even strongly agreed — while 25 per cent disagreed, only seven per cent strongly.

If you’re in government, regardless of what level — federal, provincial, or municipal — these are your customers, the general population

“I didn’t think it would be that high. I thought maybe it was more a noisy minority as opposed to a prevailing majority opinion,” said Andrew Ennis, an executive vice-president at the market research company Leger, and lead researcher for this data.

The numbers are a warning, he said.

“If you’re in government, regardless of what level — federal, provincial, or municipal — these are your customers, the general population. They all interact with you in some form or fashion, and these are their opinions. And they’re basically saying we don’t like how business is running right now.”

Ennis said his team heard talk for months about systems seeming to be falling apart or broken. He saw examples of it, too, with enormous waits for passports, frustrating airport delays, fast-rising grocery prices.

Pollsters at Leger had kicked around the idea of polling the sentiment for a while.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party must have picked up on the same discontent.

“It feels like everything is broken in this country right now,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in November. It grabbed a lot of headlines and he’s repeated it since. Last week in a speech to his caucus, he said it again — “everything feels broken,” this time in French.

If it was bait to create a wedge issue, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau grabbed it.

“When he says Canada is broken,” Trudeau said of Poilievre in a speech, “that’s where we draw the line. This is Canada. And in Canada, better is always possible, but I don’t accept Canadians and politicians that talk down our country.

“Canada is not broken,” Trudeau added with emphasis.

With the concept becoming a hot button issue, it seemed time to see what Canadians think about it, Ennis said. Leger gauged attitudes of adult Canadian residents on their satisfaction with how the country is running.

They found Canadians aren’t in a happy place.

Asked to describe how they’re feeling when they think of how Canada is being managed, half of all respondents said they felt “angry.” That includes 30 per cent who said they’re “somewhat angry,” but also 20 per cent who specified they were “very angry.”

If the poll captures the mood of the nation, then it translates into a lot of anger in a lot of places from a lot of people.

There are some people content with things, but it’s a minority — 41 per cent of respondents said they were “happy,” but precious few said “very happy,” only four per cent. The remaining nine per cent said they didn’t know.

If these were Google or Yelp reviews, business owners would be calling rebranding or reputation consultants.

“Half the people are angry — that’s a large number of your customers out there that are not in a gentle or open frame of mind,” said Ennis.

He said those who expressed a feeling of being very angry are likely to be the most vocal about their feelings, which offers a challenge to civil discourse. “It is not going to be a lot of positive noise out there. It is going to be more negative noise,” he said.

While the opinion poll didn’t distinguish levels of government, anger at the federal level was on display during Trudeau’s recent visit to Hamilton, Ont., where he needed a phalanx of police for a tense, short walk on the street through a seething, shouting crowd.

That’s negative noise; zero-star reviews, thumbs down.

A demographic breakdown of poll respondents who felt angry and that things are broken shows the sentiment isn’t just a variation of “old man yells at cloud.”

More women said they were angry than men (51 per cent compared to 48 per cent). Of those who said they were happy, more were men (44 per cent compared to 39 per cent).

The same held for everything feeling broken: 70 per cent of women agreed compared to 64 per cent of men; 32 per cent of those women felt it strongly, while 27 per cent of the men did.

It’s the intensity of anger where men are tops. Angry men tend to be angrier than angry women: 17 per cent of angry women said they were very angry, while 22 per cent of angry men took it up a notch.

People aren’t in a very charitable mood right now

Perhaps even more at odds with common perceptions, more of the oldest cohort of respondents — those 55 or older — said they were happy than those in the youngest group of 18-to-34-year-olds (43 per cent compared to 40 per cent).

Albertans are the angriest about Canada’s management.

Respondents in Alberta were the least likely to say they were happy — just 29 per cent. Respondents in B.C. were the happiest, at 46 per cent, followed by Quebec at 44 per cent, Ontario at 42 per cent, which is the same as the Atlantic provinces (which are measured together), followed by Manitoba and Saskatchewan (measured together) at 40 per cent.

Sixty-one per cent of Alberta respondents chose angry, with almost half of them dialling it up to very angry.

That 30 per cent of very angry Albertans far exceeded respondents in other regions: 17 per cent in both Quebec and Atlantic Canada; 19 per cent in Ontario and B.C., 22 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

What made so many Canadians angry?

The poll gauged that too. Respondents were asked to choose the issues that have the most impact on them and their family: Rising costs and inflation topped the list, named by 68 per cent of respondents. Next came health care, named by 59 per cent.

The other issues, in descending order, were: Affording a place to live (43 per cent), jobs and the economy (40 per cent), environment and climate change (35 per cent), crime (30 per cent), homelessness (29 per cent), schools and education (24 per cent), COVID-19 (21 per cent), labour shortages (20 per cent), affording post-secondary education (15 per cent), immigration/passport system (15 per cent), state of local roads (14 per cent), substance use (14 per cent), Canada’s response to the war in Ukraine (14 per cent), public transportation (12 per cent), airport/travel delays (12 per cent), state of highways (11 per cent).

“That’s the message underlining the poll,” said Ennis.

“We’ve got governments that have really tough public policy challenges to deal with right now — health care, affordability and interest rate hikes, homelessness at the municipal level — and you have to navigate these big public policy areas through a general public opinion landscape that’s not super friendly. People aren’t in a very charitable mood right now.

“That’s the trouble for governments. They have their work cut out for them.”

The public opinion poll studied responses from 1,554 adult Canadian residents through online surveys, randomly recruited through Leger’s online panel from Jan. 20 to Jan. 22. Results were weighted according to age, gender, and region, as well as by education and presence of children in the household in order to ensure a representative sample of the population.

As an online survey, traditional margins of error do not apply, according to Leger. If the data had been collected through the same-size probability sample, the margin of error would be reported as plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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