What can new polling tell us about the health of Canadian democracy?

According to polling by the Environics Institute, 70 per cent of Canadians are either very or somewhat satisfied with "the way democracy works in Canada."

Is that good?

At the very least, it could certainly be worse. And Environics surveys show that the share of Canadians expressing satisfaction has held relatively steady over the last 15 years — it was 70 per cent in 2010, rose gradually to 79 per cent in 2017, fell to 65 per cent in 2023 and then rebounded back to 70 per cent last year.

Satisfaction has also consistently run higher in Canada than in the United States, where Environics found that 56 per cent of Americans were satisfied with the way their democracy works in 2025.

Across two recent reports from the Canadian analytics firm — the first was published in November, the second was released last week — there are other encouraging, or at least reassuring, data points.

But there are also findings that could be cause for concern — or reminders that, when it comes to maintaining the health of a democracy, it's leadership that ultimately matters most.

First, the good news. 

Despite widespread concern about declining levels of trust, Environics finds that overall levels of trust in many of the pillars of Canadian democracy — elections, the prime minister, Parliament, the Supreme Court — have been relatively stable over the last 10 to 15 years (though there has been a gradual, but small, increase in the share of Canadians with a low level of trust in mass media). On several fronts, levels of trust are also higher in Canada than in the United States.

"Rather than steadily declining, levels of trust tend to oscillate as circumstances change," the authors of the Environics report write. "Few Canadians typically express a lot of trust in politicians or political parties; however, this is neither new nor necessarily worsening over time."

Environics classifies 41 per cent of Canadians as having "a lot" of trust in elections (answering six or seven on a seven-point scale), 47 per cent expressing "some" trust (three to five) and just 12 per cent having low trust (one or two). In 2017, those numbers were 41 per cent, 50 per cent and nine per cent.

The share of Canadians expressing a lot of pride or some pride in living under the Canadian political system has also held relatively steady over the last 15 years. In 2025, 40 per cent expressed a lot of pride, 48 per cent said some and just 11 per cent expressed not a lot of pride.

Seventy-four per cent of Canadians agree that "democracy is preferable to any other form of government" and just 11 per cent agree with the statement that "under some circumstances an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic one." Seventy-six per cent either strongly or somewhat agree that "election results should be respected regardless of which candidate or party wins."

Such findings offer some reassurance about the state of Canadian democracy — at the very least, they don't seem to show a democracy in deep crisis.

"The fact that we still have a happy middle where people are generally satisfied with the performance of democracy and that they are continuing to blame politicians for their discontent rather than the institutions, that's a really good sign," says Stewart Prest, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia. "That's in some sense what democracy is all about. The ability to get furious at individual leaders but not reject the [system]."