Original blog posting on EKOS Politics here, reposted with permission. The full report for this release is available here.

Nature occupies a distinctive and unusually resilient place in the Canadian imagination. In a period marked by heightened national anxiety, geopolitical uncertainty, sovereignty concerns, and deepening polarization, attachment to nature remains one of the few genuinely cross-cutting sources of Canadian identity. Canadians continue to see nature, wilderness, oceans, and national parks not simply as environmental assets, but as defining symbols of the country itself.

Importantly, this attachment to nature appears to evade many of the sharp divisions now evident across other domains of public life. While Canadians are deeply polarized on a range of economic, cultural, and institutional issues, there remains a broad cross-partisan consensus supporting the protection of species at risk and the conservation of natural spaces. Even among Conservative voters, a majority believe governments have a responsibility to prevent species from going extinct.

Equally important, most Canadians do not see protecting nature and pursuing economic growth as fundamentally incompatible objectives. The public is not embracing a simplistic “development versus nature” dichotomy. Rather, Canadians appear to be seeking balance and equilibrium: supporting ambitious economic development, infrastructure expansion, and nation-building projects while also expecting credible protections for biodiversity, natural heritage, and species at risk. Majorities reject the notion that economic urgency or project speed should automatically override environmental considerations.

However, this consensus is not seamless. When Canadians are confronted with more concrete and difficult trade-offs involving resource extraction, infrastructure expansion, or regional economic interests, significant polarization does emerge. These divisions are particularly visible across partisan, regional, gender, and educational lines. Nevertheless, even in these more difficult cases, public opinion continues to lean toward protecting nature and preventing extinction rather than subordinating these concerns entirely to economic imperatives.

Some of these tensions reflect the broader processes of epistemic fragmentation and populism that are increasingly shaping democratic politics. The more familiar Trumpian or ordered populism remains associated with skepticism toward environmental regulation, climate policy, and institutional authority. At the same time, however, an emergent progressive populism is becoming increasingly visible, particularly among younger Canadians. This emerging orientation is strongly pro-climate, more skeptical of concentrated corporate power, and less persuaded by traditional business-first or development-first arguments.

These findings suggest that environmental and biodiversity issues are no longer simply technocratic policy questions. They are increasingly intertwined with broader issues of identity, sovereignty, stewardship, legitimacy, and competing visions of Canada’s future.

The current government remains in a strong political position overall, particularly on questions related to economic stewardship and national sovereignty. However, its comparative advantage on environmental and nature-related issues is narrower and potentially more vulnerable over the medium and longer term. Policies perceived as weakening species-at-risk protections or subordinating environmental safeguards entirely to accelerated development could create political and symbolic tensions, particularly among younger, urban, highly educated, and progressive voters who attach strong value to these issues.

The broader lesson from these findings is not that Canadians oppose economic development or major national projects (quite the opposite). Canadians appear to believe that a durable equilibrium between ambitious economic goals and the preservation of core environmental values is both desirable and achievable. Governments pursuing large-scale economic transformation may therefore wish to consider approaches that preserve this sense of balance, stewardship, and legitimacy rather than framing development and nature as irreconcilable objectives.

Methodology:

This survey was conducted for Nature Canada.

This survey was conducted online using EKOS’ unique research panel, Probit. Our panel offers exhaustive coverage of the Canadian population (i.e., Internet, phone, cell phone), random recruitment (in other words, participants are recruited randomly; they do not opt themselves into our panel), and equal probability sampling. All respondents to our panel are recruited by telephone using random digit dialling and are confirmed by live interviewers. Unlike opt-in online panels, Probit supports margin of error estimates.

The field dates for this online survey are April 22 to May 3, 2026. In total, a random sample of 1,022 Canadians aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are subdivided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, and education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, region, educational attainment, and COVID-19 vaccine uptake to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.

EKOS follows the CRIC Public Opinion Research Standards and Disclosure Requirements.

The data tables for this survey are available here. The questionnaire is available here.