With Canada’s future relationship with the United States dominating the federal election campaign so far, a new poll is shedding some light on which party Canadians think would be best to manage the country’s resources — one of the pillars of our economic relationship with the Americans.
When asked which party and leader would do the best job at managing Canada’s energy and resources, a majority of the respondents to the Ipsos poll, commissioned exclusively for Global News, chose the federal Liberals and their leader Mark Carney, over the Conservatives and their leader Pierre Poilievre.
Overall, 69 per cent of those surveyed said Canada needs to “act faster on opportunities for developing energy and resource projects in light of the dispute with the U.S.” — including 26 per cent of respondents who agreed that we need to “push obstacles out of the way” and 43 per cent who agreed we need to move faster but “with some caution.”
When asked which leader and party would do the best job of managing Canada’s energy and resources to “create jobs and grow the economy,” as well as ensuring we do it in an “environmentally responsible and sustainable manner,” a majority of respondents chose Mark Carney and the federal Liberals over Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives. (38 per cent for the Liberals versus 25 per cent for the Conservatives)
“It shouldn’t be surprising that the Liberals lead on energy issues related to the environment,” said Kyle Braid, senior vice-president of Ipsos Public Affairs. “What could be surprising to some, especially to the Conservatives, is that the Liberals are actually leading on the energy file for managing it for creating jobs and growing the economy.
“It’s surprising because this is a bread-and-butter issue of the Conservatives — it’s something they’ve been talking about for years,” added Braid. “Canadians do seem to want to see growth in these industries, yet at this point Canadians seem to be more approving of the, let’s say, balanced approach of the Liberals than the aggressive let’s-do-everything approach of the Conservatives.”
Broken down further, by region and demographics, Carney and the Liberals poll ahead of Poilievre and the Conservatives in all categories — with the exception of Alberta, where more respondents think the Conservatives would do a better job at balancing economic opportunities and environmental concerns, (41 per cent for the Conservatives versus 37 per cent for the Liberals)
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However, the spread of 4 percentage points is not as wide of a gap as Braid expected.
“One of the surprises here is that even in Alberta, while the Conservatives are viewed as better to deal with these issues than the liberals, the gap is only 10 points. I think, historically, that would be a gap that’s more like 20, 30 or 40 points,” said Braid.
“So something has shifted here for the Liberals overall, and it has carried into the energy file.”
While energy issues may have garnered more headlines since the election of Donald Trump and his complaints about the U.S. balance of trade with Canada, only four per cent of Canadians said energy is one of the top issues for them in the federal election campaign — so “it’s not a vote decider yet,” said Braid.
However, he thinks the Conservatives will have an opportunity to change that in the upcoming federal leaders debates.
“The Conservatives need something to come back in this campaign. Clearly in their advertising and their speeches, they’re trying to differentiate from the liberals. It hasn’t worked so far,” added Braid.
“Yet there’s a huge opportunity for the upcoming leader debates where these issues I expect will be front and center and represent a real opportunity for the conservatives to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between April 1st and 3rd, 2025, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of n=1,000 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 ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians been polled. 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. Ipsos abides by the disclosure standards established by the CRIC, found here: https://canadianresearchinsightscouncil.ca/standards/
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
