The 2022 Proof Strategies CanTrustIndex has arrived, and it’s not looking good for the government or the legacy media.
Trust in traditional institutions has declined steadily over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the poll found.
The index surveyed over 1,500 Canadians from Jan. 4 to Jan. 14.
According to the survey, governments saw a 10% drop in trust over the course of 2021-2022. Currently, only 22% of Canadians saw governments of all levels as trustworthy – down from 32% last year.
The results come at a time when more and more people are expressing dissatisfaction with governments’ response to the pandemic and are increasingly calling for an end to restrictions.
Low trust impacted on all levels of government, with only 33% of Canadians seeing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as trustworthy. The premiers scored 32% on the index, while community mayors achieved 38% trust levels.
Meanwhile, traditional media continued to plummet as Canadians tuned out of legacy news sources. In 2022, only 35% of Canadians said they trusted traditional media, compared to 38% last year.
When it comes to trusting certain professions, only 44% of people put faith in journalists to provide reliable information, while only half that number – 22% – trusted politicians. Medical doctors and scientists earned the highest trust levels, reporting 78% and 75% trustworthiness respectively.
When combined, trust in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business, media and governments continued a five-year decline, currently sitting at 34% in 2022.
Only a single media outlet – La Presse – scored higher than 50%, with 54% of Canadians expressing trust in the organization. Meanwhile, CTV, CBC, TVA and the Globe & Mail all scored below 50%.
In 2022, Canadians also reported a striking decline of 13% when it came to how free they felt their country was. In 2020, 73% of Canadians said the country was performing well with regard to the core value of freedom, but in 2022 that number had shrunk to 60%.
Similarly, fewer people thought democracy was being upheld in Canada. In 2020, 65% of Canadians were satisfied with its democratic values while this year only 54% of respondents reported the same belief.
