A higher percentage of women agreed Canada is broken than did men, and more in the youngest age brackets than among the oldest
Feb 06, 2023
A majority of Canadians looking at the country they see around them say everything seems to be broken. Concerned about rising costs, the state of health care, affordable housing, jobs and more, half of us are also angry about the way Canada is being run, a national opinion poll says...
Two-thirds of those asked (67 per cent) agreed everything feels broken — [30%] even strongly agreed — while 25 per cent disagreed, only seven per cent strongly.
“I didn’t think it would be that high. I thought maybe it was more a noisy minority as opposed to a prevailing majority opinion,” said Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president at the market research company Leger, and lead researcher for this data.
The numbers are a warning, he said.
“If you’re in government, regardless of what level — federal, provincial, or municipal — these are your customers, the general population. They all interact with you in some form or fashion, and these are their opinions. And they’re basically saying we don’t like how business is running right now.”
Enns said his team heard talk for months about systems seeming to be falling apart or broken. He saw examples of it, too, with enormous waits for passports, frustrating airport delays, fast-rising grocery prices...
“It feels like everything is broken in this country right now,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in November. It grabbed a lot of headlines and he’s repeated it since. Last week in a speech to his caucus, he said it again — “everything feels broken,” this time in French...
“When he says Canada is broken,” Trudeau said of Poilievre in a speech, “that’s where we draw the line. This is Canada. And in Canada, better is always possible, but I don’t accept Canadians and politicians that talk down our country.
“Canada is not broken,” Trudeau added with emphasis.