youth

Are Canadians more egalitarian than Americans? Are they more troubled by the existence of various forms of social inequality – such as those between rich and poor, men and women, white and Black – and more inclined to look to government to address them?

With a minority government in Ottawa, a federal election is possible at any time – triggered either deliberately or by accident. This encourages political observers to check opinion polls as often as regular people check the weather. | By Andrew Parkin

As part of its Focus Canada public opinion research program (launched in 1976), the Environics Institute examined the ballot questions for the April 2025 federal election by asking voters to identify which issue was the most important to them personally in choosing which party to support.

To explore how Canadians view public education, the latest wave of the Survey on Employment and Skills asked Canadians two questions about schools in their communities. The first addressed the objectives that schools should have, and the second assessed school performance.

The 2024 survey finds that the proportions of Canadians who feel financially worse off today than their parents were at their age, and who feel that the next generation will be worse off than they are, are both trending upwards.

As immediate concern with the COVID-19 pandemic faded, new issues have appeared on the public’s agenda, the most prominent of which have been the cost of living and the affordability of housing.

Those of us who do public opinion research feel like we have the best seat in the house. The data we collect over the course of a year provide insights on how people are doing and what they are worried about.

A new national research project documents for the first time the social norms that govern how Canadians think about and act on different types of racial micro-aggressive actions directed at people who are Indigenous or Black.

After the optimism of the country’s centenary in 1967, one set of scholars published a group of essays entitled Must Canada Fail? In a similar fashion, the adoption of a new, made-in-Canada Constitution in 1982 was met with another classic academic volume: And No One Cheered.

This study covers a large and diverse population but it is nonetheless possible to draw from it a broad portrait of leading-edge Generation Z and Millennial Canadians.