On the question of the size of government, there was no real change between 2019, and 2021 or 2022 - that is, from before the pandemic to during the pandemic. We tracked Canadians views on whether they prefer larger government (with more services) or smaller government (with fewer services), and on whether governments have a positive or negative impact on most people’s lives, from early 2019 to early 2023 (skipping 2020 - note that these surveys always take place in January or February). Here’s the first one.ĭid the pandemic - particularly the federal government’s use of its spending power to respond to the emergency - affect Canadians’ views about the role and impact of government? Did it lead more of us to favour larger governments or to see governments as a positive force? Every couple of weeks, I’ll feature something that I think is worth highlighting- and I hope you’ll subscribe and join the conversation. We have a bunch of interesting findings that don’t find their way into our published research reports, or that don’t dovetail easily with media coverage of day-to-day events. I created this Substack so I could share more of the survey data collected by the Environics Institute for Survey Research.

Cdn substack