Why do 63% of Canadians feel like the centres of power ignore them?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
10 April, 2025
OTTAWA — At the halfway point of Canada’s federal election, 63 percent of Canadians agree that it is “impossible” for people like them “to have any real influence on the political decisions” that affect them. That key finding comes from a new poll by the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) in partnership with Cardus. The poll of 5,000 people in Canada and 5,000 people in the United States found that Americans feel slightly more empowered with 57 percent of them feeling powerless to influence political decisions.
In Canada, having a sense of agency is lowest among men aged 35 to 54. Sixty-eight percent of them agree they can’t influence political decisions that affect them. Among residents of Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Alberta—around seven in 10 residents of those provinces feel powerless.
“The feeling of being politically powerless is one of the more dangerous undercurrents in this federal election,” says Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus. “Unchecked, these feelings can lead to social division. I hope that leaders across the political spectrum play a unifying role because society flourishes when all Canadians feel they have democratic influence in the centres of power.”
Meanwhile, Canadians don’t see the country as too divided to ever be united again. Only 33 percent of Canadians agree that social divisions are too big to ever bridge. Americans are less optimistic. Just over half of Americans agree that nothing could ever bring their country back together.
Once again, there are pockets of higher concern about division in Canada. A full 42 percent of men aged 35 to 54 feel Canadian society is too divided to ever unite. That feeling jumps to 46 percent among residents of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Canadians also seem more open to disagreement than Americans. Almost six in 10 Canadians agree that disagreement in conversation is “interesting and informative.” Slightly less than half of Americans, however, find disagreement stimulating. Fifty-three percent of Americans say disagreement is “stressful and frustrating.”
The ARI polling report is freely available online.
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MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Communications
613-899-5174
media@cardus.ca
Shachi Kurl
Angus Reid Institute – President
604-908-1693
shachi.kurl@angusreid.org
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Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.