Less than a quarter of Canadians are happy with how the government spends money: Ipsos survey

Ottawa announces new $1.2B housing initiative The federal government is launching a new $1.2B affordable housing initiative to make housing more cost effective and energy efficient.

Less than a quarter (23 per cent) of Canadians think the federal government is properly spending money on the most important issues facing the country, according to new survey data from Ipsos.

The survey, conducted on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute, also found 64 per cent of people think the government is doing an ineffective job allocating funds to address important problems, while 13 per cent said they don't know or preferred not to answer.

More than half of Canadians (55 per cent) said the government spends too much money, while 27 per cent think it is an acceptable level, according to the poll. Only nine per cent of Canadians said government spending is too low, while another nine per cent said they don't know or preferred not to answer.

The majority of those surveyed (67 per cent) think they pay too much money in income tax, while one per cent think they don’t pay enough. According to Ipsos, 65 per cent of men and 70 per cent of women believe the amount they pay in income tax is too high. Younger Canadians (aged 18 to 34) are more likely to think taxes are too high (72 per cent) compared to Canadians aged 55 and older (63 per cent).

The poll also found most people (63 per cent) are unhappy with the accountability and transparency of the government's spending practices—31 per cent said they were satisfied with them.

The poll gauged Canadians' thoughts on carbon pricing, which people are generally slightly more likely to dislike. Ipsos says 25 per cent of Canadians strongly oppose it and another 20 per cent somewhat oppose it—in total, 41 per cent of people said they support carbon pricing while 45 per cent oppose it. Fifteen per cent of people said they don't know or preferred not to answer. According to the data, 68 per cent of people from Atlantic Canada oppose carbon pricing, while 47 per cent of Quebecers support it.

More than six in ten Canadians think higher government spending over the past three years is causing higher levels of inflation, while 26 per cent disagree. A similar amount of men (26 per cent) and women (25 per cent) said they disagree that government spending is driving inflation up.

TAXING THE RICH

A third of Canadians (33 per cent) believe people who earn more than $250,000 per year can be considered rich, while just over a quarter (27 per cent) say it should be people who make more than $500,000 per year. According to the survey, to be considered a rich person, 17 per cent of people said you need to make more than $100,000, 16 per cent said more than $1 million and seven per cent said more than $5 million.

Ipsos data also shows 71 per cent of Canadians say increasing corporate taxes will drive up prices for consumers, 80 per cent of people from Quebec feel the same, while 24 per cent of people from Ontario disagree. Sixty-one per cent of Canadians say higher taxes will discourage wealthy people from staying in Canada, a similar percentage of people across all regions agree.

However, more than 43 per cent of people believe the rich should pay more than half of their income in taxes while 33 per cent say the rich pay their fair share. Western Canadians were more likely to disagree that the rich should pay 50 per cent of their income in tax, and 35 per cent of people from the same region say the rich shouldn't be taxed further. Sixty-nine per cent of people aged 55 and older say the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes in Canada, while just under half (49 per cent) of people aged 18 to 34 agree.

METHODOLOGY

These are the findings of an online Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute. A sample of 1,020 Canadian residents aged 18 years and over was interviewed between the June 29th and July 3rd, 2023. Weighting according to age, gender and region was employed to ensure that the sample's composition is representative of the overall population according to the latest census information. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the results are accurate to within +/- 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 , of what the results would have been had all Canadian adults been polled. Some totals may not add up to 100 per cent due to rounding.