A Leger survey found 57% of Canadians feel that freedom of speech is under threat in Canada. Meanwhile, only 36% believe the opposite.
Conservatives are more likely to think freedom of speech is threatened. According to the survey, 76% of Conservative voters believe it is.
The poll also found that 70% of Conservative voters and Canadians 55 years or older believe it’s harder to express their opinions in public now.
According to the survey, six in ten Canadians are confident that the next election will be free and fair. Another 21% said they were not very confident, while 9% said they were not confident at all.
Overall, Americans are more likely than Canadians to think that their country’s freedom of speech is threatened.
Compared to the U.S., 41% of the 1008 Americans surveyed said they were not confident the next federal election would be free and fair, with 16% of those saying they were not confident at all.
The survey found that while most, 61% of Canadians, think their opinions are mostly socially acceptable, 19% believe their opinions are mostly unacceptable.
One in four Conservative voters felt their opinions were not socially accepted.
Liberal voters were more likely to support limitations on free speech. 64% of Liberals said, “There should be limits on freedom of speech to ensure that things such as hate speech, speeches preaching a form of intolerance, or speeches against democracy be prevented from reaching the public.”
At about the same rate, 60% of conservatives were more likely to say that free speech should never be limited and that all opinions should be debated publicly.
Compared with the U.S., 45% of Canadians said there should never be limits to free speech, while 57% of Americans said the same.
NDP voters were the most likely to support limits on free speech, with 66% saying it should be limited and 25% saying it should not be limited.
Of PPC voters, 74% said freedom of speech should never be limited.
The survey also found that 29% of Canadians feel that a growing lack of respect between people is to blame for an increase in hate speech and intolerance.
Others said politics were to blame. 11% said certain politicians are causing the increase in hate, 8% said it’s right-wing extremists who are to blame, 7% said left-wing wokism is the problem, and 13% of Canadians believe it can be chalked up to “a degradation of the moral fibre in the country.”
The web survey randomly selected 1,610 Canadians aged 18 or older online on April 26 to 28, 2024.