While Canadians still generally support standing firm in the trade war with the United States, a new poll shows that support is falling sharply the moment Canadians are asked to pay for it.
A poll by think tank Build Canada found a clear majority said they would not support any trade strategy that threatens their retirement savings, risks the job of someone they love or requires even a modest tax increase.
When asked if they would be willing to pay an extra $500 a year to hold the line in the current trade war, 56 percent called it “unacceptable.”
The additional spending would result in an overall tax increase of about one per cent, given that the average Canadian household pays about $48,000 a year in taxes.
Respondents were even less willing to risk any employment consequences, with 68 per cent saying it was “unacceptable” that trade war prosecutions in Ottawa come at the expense of “increased risk of household job loss.”
Both sentiments seemed to contrast with the number of respondents calling for Canada to “stand firm” on its trade policy with the US; only 20 percent said Canada should “make concessions” to maintain its trade access to the United States.
“These results highlight the tension between Canada’s preferred negotiating position and Canadians’ acceptance of its potential economic consequences,” Build Canada said in an accompanying analysis.
Last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected a deal that would have normalized US trade relations after months of tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
In response, the U.S. launched a new round of 50 percent tariffs on about $27.6 billion worth of Canadian imports. Starting Tuesday, Carney’s government retaliated by imposing a package of 639 retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to Canada.
The new tariffs range from a 50 percent tax on American-made toilet paper to a 25 percent tax on American-made industrial lawn mowers.
So far, Ottawa has expressed no intention of returning to the negotiating table, with Carney suggesting they plan to maintain the status quo at least until the end of Trump’s current term in 2029.
In an Aug. 24 announcement of the trade war subsidy package, Carney said, “We will support these businesses for as long as necessary, in other words, beyond the lifetime of the current U.S. administration.”
In a video message released Tuesday, Carney warned there would be economic consequences as his government pursues a long-term strategy to reduce Canada’s ties to the U.S. market.
“This pivot will come at a cost. There’s always a cost to action. But it’s nowhere near the cost of standing still,” he said.
The new survey is the first published by Build Canada, a think tank launched in February 2025 with support from the Canadian technology sector. Daniel Debow, former vice president of Shopify, joins the board of directors.
The nonprofit previously launched an interactive “result tracker” tracking progress on 603 separate promises made by the Carney government. According to the tracker’s latest count, 182 projects were completed, 287 remained “in progress” and five were marked as “broken”.
A new survey on the costs of the trade war is not the first time Canadians’ support for a policy has diverged sharply from their willingness to pay for it.
In 2019, shortly before the federal carbon tax was introduced, a CBC-commissioned poll found that while respondents considered climate change one of Canada’s most pressing policy issues, a majority were unwilling to pay more than $100 a year to address it.
Just four years later—with Canadians now paying a 14-cent carbon tax for every liter of gasoline—a Postmedia-Leger poll found overwhelming opposition to the tax, with criticism particularly concentrated among Atlantic Canadians who had just begun paying it.
Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice president, noted at the time that all this opposition was coming from people who were previously quite optimistic about carbon reduction strategies.
“When you just ask people, ‘Hey, do you support all these great things?’ they struggle to say yes,” he said.
The Build Canada poll also found sharp divisions between those who believed Canada should “make concessions” to U.S. trade demands.
Only three percent of respondents who voted Liberal in the last federal election chose the concessionist approach, compared with the majority of Conservatives (50 percent vs. 41 percent).
“The survey does not determine whether these differences reflect political preferences, economic circumstances or a combination of factors,” it said.
Build Canada surveyed a random sample of 1,696 Canadians between August 31 and September 4. weighted by the 2021 census. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points in 19 out of 20 cases.