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Workers are seen on the assembly hall at Cavalier Tool & Manufacturing Ltd. in Windsor, Ont., on Aug. 26. A Nanos Research survey conducted for The Globe and Mail found that 80 per cent of respondents said they support or somewhat support Ottawa’s plan to retaliate with dollar-for-dollar countertariffs.Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail
Most Canadians support Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to walk away from trade negotiations with the United States and instead impose retaliatory countertariffs, even if it means paying more for goods, a new poll suggests.
A Nanos Research survey conducted for The Globe and Mail found that 85 per cent of more than 1,000 respondents said they support or somewhat support Mr. Carney’s rejection of the proposed trade deal with the Trump administration.
The survey also found that 80 per cent of respondents said they support or somewhat support Ottawa’s plan to retaliate with dollar-for-dollar countertariffs on a range of U.S. products, scheduled to take effect on Tuesday.
Negotiations to avoid additional U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods fell apart last month when Mr. Carney ordered his officials to withdraw from talks and return home. He later said the Americans introduced unreasonable demands on a range of issues, from French-language requirements to tariffs on trucks.
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Nik Nanos, the chief data scientist for Nanos Research, said support for retaliatory tariffs is as high as the early days of the trade war at the beginning of last year, when American policies fuelled antipathy toward the United States and consumer boycotts of U.S. goods and travel.
“We’re back to a situation where the temperature is about as hot as it got when Donald Trump first said that Canada should be the 51st state,” Mr. Nanos said.
About seven in 10 survey respondents said they were willing or somewhat willing to pay higher prices for everyday goods as part of Canada’s response to U.S. tariffs.
Yet, only time will tell how many Canadians will hold on to these views when “economic causalities start piling in” from the trade war, Mr. Nanos said. He added the near-consensus could be short-lived, mirroring the common trend of public opinion during wars.
“That’s the risk for the Carney administration,” he said.
The online random survey sampled 1,037 Canadians from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error for regional results is higher.
Respondents from the Prairies were comparatively less likely to support Canada rejecting the possible trade deal, at about 17 per cent. Similarly, about 19 per cent of respondents from the region opposed Canada implementing countertariffs.
“Albertans and folks in the Prairies, specifically, are more likely to have an affinity with the United States in terms of the importance of the bi-national relationship and the importance of the trade talks,” Mr. Nanos said. Still, he flagged that even in this region, nearly 77 per cent somewhat rejected the potential U.S.-Canada deal.
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Overall, respondents expressed high levels of support for the country’s elbows-up posture: More than three in four said they had both sought out purchasing Canadian goods and avoided purchasing American goods or services in response to Mr. Trump’s comments.
Six in 10 Canadians are either confident or somewhat confident that Canada can protect its economic interests if a new agreement with the U.S. is reached, the poll found.
Meanwhile, about two-thirds also said they were worried or somewhat worried about the impact that tariffs will have on them and their families.
These coinciding views seem to reflect the “clear-headed” understanding Canadians have about the effects of a trade war, Mr. Nanos said.
“They know that you’re not going to enter into a tariff war with the United States without suffering.”
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Three-quarters of Canadians disagreed in some way that the U.S. is a trustworthy ally of Canada. The lowest level of agreement (4.7 per cent) came from Quebeckers. Mr. Carney has said that the U.S. tried to influence Canada’s language protections during the August trade talks.
Despite the lack of trust, polling did suggest that some Canadians still believe there is a chance the relationship between the two countries could rebound. More than three in five expected Canada’s relationship with the U.S. to be better (22 per cent) or somewhat better (39 per cent) five years from now.
Put another way, Mr. Nanos pointed out that only one in five respondents firmly said the relationship would improve after this time period.
“Even the hope that Canadians have that things will get better to one extent or another in the next five years is tepid,” he said.