7 in 10 Canadians say they feel the country is ‘broken’: Ipsos poll

Canada Day is around the corner, but many Canadians are not necessarily in a mood to celebrate the state of the country, a new poll suggests.

Ipsos polling done exclusively for Global News shows 70 per cent of Canadians agree that “Canada is broken,” a charge Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre repeatedly makes.

“He’s capturing a mood. It’s not something that Pierre Poilievre has created. He’s simply identifying the conditions that he’s seeing out in the Canadian public and calling it out and labeling it,” Ipsos Public Affairs CEO Darrell Bricker said.

Ipsos surveyed 1,001 Canadians between June 12 and 14 and found feelings of pessimism were highest among Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34, with 78 per cent holding the view the country needs fixing.

Bricker says the responses point to larger frustrations.

“Do people feel like their country is broken? No. They feel more like their institutions are broken and they’ve lost a sense of togetherness,” Bricker said.

The pollster, who has measured Canadian public opinion for 35 years, says it’s the worst outlook he’s seen and that “people do not feel like they’re succeeding in life these days, as they should be.”

Bricker says the millennial voting bloc, which appears to be the most disillusioned demographic, is gravitating increasingly towards Poilievre, despite Trudeau’s pledge in this year’s federal budget to bring in policies to help “generational fairness.”

“Older Canadians tend to be a little bit more optimistic about what the country has been because it’s worked for them. But younger Canadians … they’re the ones who are saying, ‘You know, it’s not working for me,'” Bricker said.

“And as a result, they’re looking for change, and the agent of change in this particular situation