If given the opportunity, 43 per cent of young Canadians would vote to be American, with a few guarantees.
“One group of people that we’re seeing in Canada these days that are having a pretty tough time with the direction of the country are young men,” Darrell Bricker with Ipsos told Global News.
“And in particular, they are most interested in taking a look at the opportunity in the U.S. if they were given the chance of voting for Canada, joining the U.S., if their Canadian dollars could be put into U.S. dollars and if their citizenship could be confirmed… It’s pretty shocking.”
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has referred to Canada as “the 51st state” in numerous social media posts, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the country’s politicians have pushed back against.
In a new Ipsos poll, when asked if they would like to be a part of America, four in 10 Canadians age 18 to 34 would vote to be American if citizenship and conversion of assets to U.S. dollars would be guaranteed.
That number drops to three in 10 among every age group polled.
“Canadians are quite patriotic,” Bricker added. “Eighty per cent of them are saying that they were given a chance on voting to join the U.S. or staying in Canada, they would definitely stay in Canada.”
Forty-eight per cent of Canadians think Trump’s comments pose a serious risk to Canada’s independence, while 43 per cent think that his comments shouldn’t be treated as serious.
“Younger Canadians are more likely to think the country is under threat,” Bricker said. “So the stability of the country going forward is not as determined as it used to be. They seem to be believing that Donald Trump is more serious in the threats in particular that he’s making.”
Most of those polled agree that Canada should remain independent of the U.S.
Two in 10 Canadians would vote for their province to become American but only if Alberta and Quebec became independent states.
For some, they see the disintegration of Canada as inevitable. One in five, 20 per cent, of those polled said it is only a matter of time before Canada and the U.S. merge, although 80 per cent disagreed.
About 27 per cent of those polled think Alberta, Quebec, or both will separate from Canada within the next 10 years.
“So when you ask people whether they would vote for Canada being part of the U.S., just straight up 80 per cent of us say that we would never do it,” Bricker said.
“But if you offer them the opportunity of full U.S. citizenship and the ability to change their assets and their currency completely over to U.S. dollars with no penalty, that number actually moves up to 30.
“Thirty as a place to start from. We’ve got to be concerned about that.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between January 9 and 13, 2025, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.