New poll says 27% of Canadians view United States as 'enemy' country

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OTTAWA — A new poll suggests that more than a quarter of Canadians — 27% — now see the United States as an “enemy” country, while another 30% still say they consider the U.S. an ally.

Another 27% of respondents to the Leger survey said they consider the United States to be a “neutral” country.

The poll comes as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to impose economically devastating tariffs on Canada and has repeatedly pushed the idea that Canada should become a U.S. state.

The poll was conducted between Feb. 14 and Feb. 17 and surveyed 1,500 Canadians and 1,000 Americans. Because it was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.

Sebastien Dallaire, Leger’s executive vice-president for Eastern Canada, said he was surprised “to see Canadians so divided on that front when the United States has been an ally for such a long period, and a strong ally at that.”

He said “enemy” is a “strong word.”

“The responses basically speak to the level of animosity that we feel right now in Canada and that are triggering kind of a broader rally-around-the-flag effect in all aspects of our lives,” Dallaire said.

Only 1% of Americans told Leger they consider Canada an enemy country, while 56% said they view Canada as an ally.

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An overwhelming majority of Canadians dislike Trump; 74% of respondents said they have an unfavourable view of the U.S. president. Dallaire said it’s “hard to get more consensual results when you ask a question like this.”

Seven per cent said they didn’t know enough about Trump to offer an opinion, while only 13% overall said they had a favourable opinion of him.

That number is higher among Conservative party supporters; 27% of them said they have a favourable view of Trump, compared to only five and seven per cent of Liberal and NDP supporters, respectively.

Conservatives were also more likely to have a positive view of the United States — 48% of Conservative supporters surveyed described it as an ally, while only 18% called it an enemy state.

Just 20% of Liberals and 21% of NDP supporters said the U.S. was an ally, while 37% of Liberal supporters and 34% of New Democrats said it was an enemy. Nearly half of Bloc Quebecois voters — 47% — said the United States is an enemy country.

“There is a partisan difference in terms of how people feel about this,” Dallaire said. “It’s clearly a pretty big gap between Conservative supporters and Liberal, NDP and Bloc supporters.”

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.