Canadians are more worried about the high cost of living and the economy than they are about Donald Trump and his administration, according to the latest Abacus survey, reversing a past trend where the U.S. president was the top concern.
The shift signals a change from the federal election in April when Canadians were more worried about a trade war with the U.S., a factor that helped Prime Minister Mark Carney get elected, explained Abacus chair and CEO David Coletto, because voters believed Carney was better equipped to deal with the American leader.Â
The poll results are “a signal that macroeconomic concerns and uncertainty are rising,” said Coletto, particularly for young people who are worried about job security and lack of available work as youth unemployment rates continue to rise, he said.
The poll, which will be published Sunday, found that 61 per cent of Canadians listed the rising cost of living as one of their top three concerns, ahead of the economy at 39 per cent, and the Trump administration at 38 per cent.
“For the last three years, people didn’t really worry about losing their job,” said Coletto. “They worried about being able to pay their bills with the income that they had. Now, insecurity around jobs is something that’s new and a new problem for this government to have to deal with.”
With an ongoing trade war and jobless numbers rising, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a
On Friday, Carney announced a number of measures to bolster the economy including a $5-billion fund for sectors hard hit by the U.S. trade turmoil, as well as $450 million for Employment Insurance training programs to help re-skill 50,000 workers over the next three years.
Despite the economic uncertainty, the poll — conducted with 1,500 Canadians from Aug. 28 to Sept. 2 — showed the Liberals were holding their ground.
If a federal election was held today, 43 per cent of those surveyed said they would vote for the Liberals, compared to 40 per cent for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and six per cent for the NDP, despite a drop in the proportion of those who said they had a positive impression of Carney: 45 per cent, down from 51 per cent in June.
But the country’s economy is the issue that the Liberals must address to keep their numbers up, said Coletto.
The poll showed that Canadians believe the Conservatives have a better handle on “pocket book issues,” such as the rising cost of living, the economy and job security and unemployment, and that the Liberals are more attuned to Trump and threats posed by Russia and China.
“There are signals that issues around the economy are rising,” said Coletto. “And as a result, some of those vulnerabilities on some of these other issues besides Trump might start to bite them if they don’t address them,” he said of the Liberals.
Abacus said the margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of the same size is +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20. The data were weighted according to census data to ensure that the sample matched Canada’s population according to age, gender, and region. Totals may not add up to 100 due to rounding.
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