Canadians preparing to head to the polls in the new year will likely vote with their wallets.
Cost of living issues continue to top Canadians’ priority lists, according to the findings of a new study. Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News.
The survey results, released Friday, reveal that one in four respondents now rank inflation and the cost of living as their top priority in Canada, an increase of five percentage points from the previous year .
While health care ranks second (17 percent, up three points from last year), other portfolio issues dominate the rest of the list, according to Ipsos.
Housing availability and affordability (14 percent) round out the top three, followed by immigration (7 percent) and the economy, unemployment and employment (also 7 percent). Taxes, poverty, social inequality and public debt all followed at 5 percent.
The poll, conducted Dec. 6-10, surveyed more than 1,000 Canadians aged 18 and older in an online forum.
Although inflation appeared generally well under control in 2024 and the Bank of Canada has quickly lowered its benchmark interest rate since mid-year, this relief came after years of rapidly rising cost of life.
“The scars of inflation are still there,” Sean Simpson, senior vice president of Ipsos Global Affairs, told Global News.
“If people couldn’t afford groceries last year, what leads us to believe they are better able to afford them this year? The answer is that they cannot. So this continues to be the number one problem in Canada.
Young Canadians will be particularly hard hit as 2025 approaches, Simpson notes. Younger generations are the most likely to have no pension, struggle to find a job or be unable to break into the property market, he points out.
Affordability anxiety is particularly acute in Canada compared to peer countries, Simpson says, with Canadians in the top five globally for their concerns about affordability for the second year in a row.
It’s particularly telling that affordability ranks health care second, he adds. In typical years, health issues tend to rank high on the list simply because there is a sense that things can always improve when it comes to ER wait times or quality care.
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“When it drops to number two, that means there’s something else going on. And it’s clearly something else, it’s the cost of living,” Simpson says.
Simpson also finds it “remarkable” that immigration has become the No. 4 issue for Canadians, reflecting concerns about how quickly population growth has worsened housing affordability problems in recent years.
Poilievre seen as main leader in tackling cost of living
The latest poll comes at the end of a turbulent 2024 for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party. Chrystia Freeland leaves the post of Minister of Finance left the Liberals scrambling in the final days of the year, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh signaled he vote for censure against the Trudeau government, potentially overthrow the minority government.
With federal elections scheduled for next year and questions over whether they could take place as early as this spring, the Ipsos poll also sheds light on who Canadians trust most to address their concerns related to cost of living.
When asked which political leader would be best equipped to deal with inflation and the cost of living, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rose to the front of the pack. The leader of the official opposition has also been seen as best suited to handle housing, the economy, taxes and immigration policy.
The NDP’s Singh was seen as the ideal steward for health care as well as issues of poverty and social inequality, while Green Party leader Elizabeth May led voters’ choices for tackling climate change .
Trudeau and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet ranked among the top choices for not addressing any of voters’ top concerns.
“Liberals are obviously less popular, but it’s much more than that. Economic sentiment is weaker, financial health is worse. Concerns about the future are higher,” says Simpson.
Although the Conservatives could be seen as the No. 1 choice for many Canadians in 2025, Simpson says the NDP has the opportunity to take second place if the Liberals continue to fall out of favor. He notes, however, that federal elections rarely hinge on issues such as health care, where the NDP appears to hold the greatest political authority.
Simpson says this poll suggests Canadians believe Trudeau has largely focused on the wrong issues in recent years. Concerns about climate change, which were a central theme in the 2019 federal election, for example, have largely faded from voters’ minds as more immediate “kitchen table” issues come to the forefront , he said.
“If you’re having trouble putting food on the table, if you’re having trouble putting a roof over your head and your children’s heads, climate change is just going to fall to the bottom of the list,” Simpson says.
Poilievre called the upcoming election a question about the Liberal carbon pricing plan, and Simpson notes that, for conservatives, cutting taxes is seen as a direct approach to the issue of affordability.
Recent measures like the two-month GST/HST holiday have not yet stemmed the Liberals’ bleeding support in the polls, he adds, because such measures are seen more as temporary relief than an approach prolonged and “long-lasting” affordability problems.
“Canadians are very focused on portfolio issues going forward. And they will reward the parties that they think will have solutions to these pocketbook problems in 2025,” Simpson said.
These are some of the conclusions of an Ipsos survey carried out between December 6 and 10, 2024 on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,001 Canadians aged 18 and over was surveyed online. Quotas and weighting were used to ensure that the composition of the sample reflected that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The accuracy of Ipsos online surveys is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, if all Canadians aged 18 and over had been surveyed. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to, coverage error and measurement error.
—with files from Anne Gaviola of Global News
