Canadians are not feeling the trust with their neighbours south of the border after months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs against Canada, new polling by Ipsos conducted exclusively for Global News has showed.
Six in 10 Canadians (60 per cent) say they can never trust the Americans the same way ever again, the poll found.
“It looks to me, based on these data, that Canadians feel that their relationship with the United States has changed in a fundamental way,” Ipsos Public Affairs CEO Darrell Bricker said.
“They’re looking for Canada to create something that protects our own sovereignty within a North American context and make sure that we’re able to survive on this part of the continent that we live on as an independent country.”
In March, Trump imposed his first round of tariffs on Canada. This was followed by months of on-again-off-again tariffs, counter-tariffs and trade uncertainty between Canada and its biggest trading partner, along with repeated remarks by Trump about annexing Canada.
The Ipsos poll found that 71 per cent Canadians feel that these Canada-U.S. disputes will continue for several years and are not going to be resolved soon.
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The poll also asked respondents whether they approve of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s handling of the relationship with the U.S.
Around half (51 per cent) said they approve of the way Carney and the federal government are managing Canada – U.S. relations, while one-third (32 per cent) disapprove and 18 per cent are not sure.
This is in contrast to the 60 per cent of the respondents who said in June they had confidence in their political leaders to “manage” Trump.
Thursday’s poll found that 42 per cent of Canadians said they believe Carney will succeed in negotiating a new trade deal with the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, 22 per cent disagree and the remainder are undecided (37 per cent).
“During the course of the election campaign, the big commitment that the prime minister made was he was the person who would be able to deliver some sort of a deal with the United States that would get us through these tariff issues. But Canadians don’t have a lot of confidence that that’s actually going to happen, or at least anytime quick,” Bricker said.
Bricker said the rise of the ‘Buy Canadian’ movement is going to present challenges to American brands operating in Canada.
“If you’re an American brand in Canada these days you’re going to have an interesting relationship with governments, but you’re also going to have an interesting relationship with consumers and consumer citizens,” he said.
The ‘Buy Canadian’ sentiment has held steady among Canadians. In June, a PwC poll showed that 75 per cent of Canadian consumers said they would pay more for premium or locally produced food products.
Canadians are also more reluctant to travel to the U.S. An Ipsos Poll conducted exclusively for Global News for Canada Day found around three-quarters of Canadians surveyed say they intend to avoid travel to the U.S.
Statistics Canada data also shows a decline in Canada-U.S. travel.
The negative perception among Canadians about the U.S. came with a renewed sense of patriotism for many, with nearly half of those surveyed in June (47 per cent) saying they are more likely to feel proud to be a Canadian than they were five years ago, up a whopping 31 points since last June.
Most Canadians believe that Canada’s problems run deeper than Trump, with only 30 per cent saying that “when Trump goes away all of Canada’s problems go away.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 9 and 12, 2025 as part of
our Trump, Tariffs, and Turmoil syndicated study. For this survey, a sample of n=2,001 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online, via the Ipsos I-Say panel and non-panel sources, and respondents earn a nominal incentive for their participation. Quotas and weighting were employed to balance
demographics to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according
to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of
Ipsos polls which include non-probability sampling is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians been polled.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
