Very proud to be Canadian? That's less likely now for supporters of one party, survey suggests

Hamilton Spectator

20 hours ago

OTTAWA — With U.S President Donald Trump making economic and expansionist threats against his northern neighbours, a new survey suggests that pride in being Canadian has increased among supporters of all federal parties — except Conservatives.
The number of Canadians who feel proud of their country has rebounded overall, according to research shared exclusively with the Star from the Environics Institute, with 62 per cent now indicating that they are very proud to be Canadian, compared to 53 per cent who said the same last September.
'This change marks the first time that this measure has increased by more than a few percentage points from one survey to the next, since our tracking first began in 1985,'
a report
outlining the survey's findings notes.
But when the results are broken down by federal party support, Conservative voters bucked the trend posted by Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois supporters, who all showed increased pride in their national identity.
Seventy-seven per cent of Liberal supporters now say they are very proud to be Canadian, up five points from last fall, while the proportion of NDP supporters who felt the same way grew from 61 to 68 per cent.
The number of Bloc supporters who felt very proud of being Canadian, meanwhile, grew from 30 per cent to 42 per cent, although the report notes that the finding should be treated with caution due to a smaller number of responses from those who backed the traditionally separatist party.
By contrast, fewer Conservative voters said they were very proud of being Canadian compared to last fall, dropping from 46 to 43 per cent. The current number is the lowest level logged by Conservative-leaning supporters since the research institute first began tracking this question in 1985.
The Environics Institute launched the survey after this spring's federal election, which followed a campaign defined by how parties platformed Canada's strengths against the backdrop of Trump's aggression. The institute released the results of a companion survey last week, which suggested that Canadian public sentiment toward the U.S.
had plunged
to new lows.
The new survey was conducted via telephone with 2,000 Canadians from May 5 to 18, with a sample of this size producing a margin of error within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Andrew Parkin, the institute's executive director, said pride in Canada has seen the steepest decline overall among Conservative backers.
'The Conservatives today are about half as likely as Conservatives in 2010 to have strong pride in being Canadian,' Parkin said.
But he added that the results aren't necessarily surprising, because supporters within the blue tent are contending with an election result for which they don't have much enthusiasm.
'The things that they think are wrong about the direction that the country was heading (in) are not going to change because the government didn't change, or at least the party in government didn't change,' Parkin said.
Parkin said a result he did find surprising was that while pride in being Canadian remains lowest in Quebec, the province is the only part of the country where the proportion of Canadians who feel very proud of their country is higher, not lower, than it was in 2010.
Compared to 2024, strong pride in being Canadian jumped eight points in Quebec. Alberta, where secessionist sentiment has recently surfaced in some quarters, had a seven-point increase.
Also of note, Parkin said, was how strong pride in Canadian identity saw a resurgence in every region of the country, aside from Atlantic Canada, which dropped from 64 per cent in 2024 to 62 per cent now.
'The fact that it's not the highest in Atlantic Canada, where traditionally, going back, it would have been among the highest, I think (is) worth noticing,' he said.