While a new poll suggests Canadians' sense of national pride has surged overall in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats against the country’s sovereignty, it has fallen in some areas, including Alberta.
The poll, conducted by Leger Marketing for the non-profit Association for Canadian Studies, says that the number of people saying they’re proud to be Canadian has jumped from 80 per cent in November 2024 to 86 per cent this month.
In Alberta, however, it fell from 84 per cent to 74 per cent, while in Atlantic Canada, the number of respondents expressing pride has dropped slightly from 91 per cent to 89 per cent since November.
The poll sampled more than 1,500 Canadians from March 1 to March 2. Because it was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.
Jack Jedwab, the president and chief executive officer of the Association for Canadian Studies, said Alberta’s lower numbers in the poll compared to the rest of Canada are due to more “affinity with the ideology of Donald Trump.”
“Some of that is that as much as when I ask Canadians, ‘Do you feel we’re very different from Americans?’, you’ll see this bigger percentage than usual saying that’s the case in Alberta,” Jedwab told CTV News Edmonton on Sunday.
“You’ll see that to a somewhat lesser extent — not a substantial less extent, but somewhat less — where there is a feeling that there’s more affinity with our American neighbors and more commonality than we may be willing to admit, that some of that is not translating into that same level of pride in being Canadian.”
National pride spiked among respondents in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
In Quebec, the number of people expressing pride in Canada has jumped from 81 per cent to 86 per cent since November.
In Ontario, 87 per cent of respondents expressed pride in Canada, up from 80 per cent.
Expressions of pride rose from 77 per cent to 86 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and from 70 per cent to 90 per cent in British Columbia.
Pride is highest among people aged 55 and over — at 92 per cent — while 86 per cent of people between the ages of 35 and 54 and 75 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 said they were proud to be Canadian.
Jedwab said what surprised him the most about the results of the poll was not so much the jump in national pride among Canadians but other aspects of the survey, including how Canadians feel they’re different from Americans.
“But instead of pointing to things like universal health care or gun control or environmental protection or bilingualism as the things that made us different from Americans, we were more inclined to say that it was because we were nicer, more dignified, more respectful, more modest — a whole range of real personal characteristics that we described as distinguishing ourselves in Americans, which is not what we see generally when these questions are asked,” Jedwab said.
“My conclusion from all this is Canadians are feeling that something very existential is being attacked by the United States when they talk about annexation, so this thing is becoming very personal in a broad way.”
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Kenny and The Canadian Press
