The Confederation of Tomorrow studies have been tracking Canadian attitudes towards reconciliation and relations with Indigenous Peoples on an annual basis since 2019. The updated results for 2026 are being released to mark National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21.
The survey shows that a majority continues to feel that individual Canadians have a role to play in efforts to bring about reconciliation; also, a plurality continues to say governments have not gone far enough to advance reconciliation. Canadians are more likely to describe current relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous people in Canada as positive rather than negative, and optimism about the prospects for reconciliation outweighs pessimism.
At the same time, there have been some recent shifts in opinion. The proportion describing relations as positive has declined somewhat since 2025, as has the proportion that is optimistic about the prospects for reconciliation. The proportion of Canadians saying that governments have not gone far enough to advance reconciliation peaked in 2022 but has declined gradually since then. And for the first time in this survey series, the proportion of B.C. residents who say that governments have gone too far to advance reconciliation exceeds the proportion who say governments have not gone far enough.
For more information, contact Dr. Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute.
2026 Survey Details
The 2026 study consists of a survey of 5,696 adults, conducted between February 14 and March 28, 2026 (92% of the responses were collected between February 19 and March 7); 91 percent of the responses were collected online. The remaining responses were collected by telephone (both landline and cell phone) from respondents living in the North or on First Nations reserves, or from francophone respondents in New Brunswick. The survey sample includes 919 people who self-identify as Indigenous (First Nations, Métis or Inuk (Inuit).
The survey is conduced on behalf of all the survey partners by the Environics Institute for Survey Research. The fieldwork is managed by Elemental DCI. The online portion of the survey drew respondents from the Leger LEO panel; the telephone interviews were conducted by Elemental DCI.
Partners
The Confederation of Tomorrow surveys give voice to Canadians about the major issues shaping the future of the federation and their political communities. They are conducted annually by an association of the country’s leading public policy and socio-economic research organizations:
Acknowledgement
This project benefits from the financial support of the Research Support Program of the Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes (SQRC) / Ce projet bénéficie de l’appui financier du Programme d’appui à la recherche du Secrétariat du Québec aux relations canadiennes (SQRC).
Note: The survey data are weighted in three separate ways, depending on the population of interest. First, the complete survey data are weighted by region, gender, age, education, home language (separately for Quebec, New Brunswick and the rest of Canada) and Indigenous identity, so as to be representative of the Canadian population. Second, the territorial sample (when reported separately) is weighted by gender, age and education. Third, the Indigenous sample (when reported separately) is weighted by gender, age, region and education.
The Confederation of Tomorrow surveys give voice to Canadians about the major issues shaping the future of the federation and their political communities. They are conducted annually by an association of the country’s leading public policy and socio-economic research organizations.
More from this Series
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Reconciliation and Relations with Indigenous Peoples 2023
The Confederation of Tomorrow surveys have covered relations with Indigenous Peoples from the beginning in 2019, documenting a gradual shift in Canadian public opinion toward greater support for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the process of reconciliation.
Reconciliation and Relations with Indigenous Peoples 2024
How do Canadians today see relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and how the process of reconciliation unfolding? Confederation of Tomorrow surveys have been addressing this topic since 2019, and the 2024 survey provides a fresh update on public attitudes from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, and how they have evolved over time.
Canadians on Reconciliation and Relations with Indigenous Peoples
This year’s report from the 2025 survey provides an opportunity to assess the state of public opinion on these issues 10 years after the completion of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.