Free speech, freedom emerging as top issues for Canadians: Nanos

Recent polling from Nanos Research shows Canadians are increasingly concerned with issues around free speech and freedom, a possible sign that Canada's recent trucker protests are having a lingering effect on the broader public.

On the Trend Line podcast, pollster Nik Nanos said of all the national issues of concern to Canadians, free speech and freedom came out as the second-most common at 8.3 per cent, behind coronavirus at 13.1 per cent and after the environment at 7.5 per cent.

These and other issues raised in recent surveys were shared to Nanos unprompted, with the concerns around freedom likely tied to the trucker protests earlier this year in Ottawa and other areas of the country, Nanos says.

"I've been polling now, wow, I think it's been for 35 years and, unprompted, freedom and free speech has not really been on the agenda or on the radar from a public opinion perspective," he said.

"But it looks like for a noticeable proportion of Canadians, unprompted, it's on their minds as to the one thing that they're worried about."

The "Freedom Convoy" protests on Parliament Hill, and the subsequent encampment, brought downtown Ottawa to a standstill for nearly a month between January and February, as demonstrators called for an end to all pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates.

The actions inspired similar protests in Canada and around the world, prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to invoke the federal Emergencies Act for the first time since it became law in 1988, granting enhanced powers to police and allowing financial institutions to freeze protesters' bank accounts.

Dozens of people were arrested as police moved in to remove demonstrators from Ottawa's downtown core in February.

Past polling from Nanos found two in three Canadians felt the protests were ineffective at getting governments to reconsider COVID-19 restrictions.

However, experts say the anger and distrust generated by the protests will likely have a long-term impact on Canadian politics.

Nanos tied the convoy to the broader populist movement seen in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and other democracies.

He said the polling also shows that a noticeable proportion of Canadians believe their freedoms have been infringed upon by governments trying to fight the pandemic.

But just as the fallout from the convoy has more Canadians concerned about freedom, so too has it created worries around extremism.

While an issue that normally doesn't make the list, 3.1 per cent of Canadians cited extremism as a concern in the same poll.

"So a little bit of a new twist, or a couple of new twists in the issue tracking," Nanos said. "We'll see whether this continues or whether it's part of a new normal for Canadian politics."

The Nanos issue tracking poll is based on 1,066 random phone interviews of Canadians 18 and older, up to March 11, 2022. The data is based on a four-week rolling average, with the oldest group of 250 interviews dropped each week and a new group of 250 added in. The survey is accurate plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

You can find a new episode of Trend Line every second Wednesday on CTVNews.ca, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

With files from CTVNews.ca Writer Brooklyn Neustaeter, CTV News Ottawa Digital Multi-Skilled Journalists Josh Pringle and Ted Raymond, CTVNews.ca Producer Sarah Turnbull and The Canadian Press