{"id":406023,"date":"2026-01-11T10:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T10:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/406023\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T10:36:15","slug":"small-majority-of-canadians-want-more-trade-with-china-ipsos-poll-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/406023\/","title":{"rendered":"Small majority of Canadians want more trade with China: Ipsos poll – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> prepares to travel to China<\/a> and seeks to restore trade and diplomatic ties, a small majority of Canadians say they support more trade<\/a> with Beijing, a new poll suggests.<\/p>\n

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The Ipsos poll<\/a> conducted exclusively for Global News, released Saturday, found that 54 per cent expressed support for closer trade ties and economic agreements with China.<\/p>\n

The results mark a turnaround from 2020, when eight out of 10 Canadians wanted the country to rely less on the Chinese market amid a nadir in relations sparked by foreign interference allegations against Beijing and the arbitrary detention of the \u201ctwo Michaels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, says the new poll\u2019s results \u201care less about China and more about the United States\u201d and the economic realities of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe reason that it\u2019s bounced back is not all of a sudden people have fallen in love with China, which is why the numbers are soft,\u201d Bricker said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that they\u2019ve bounced back is because people are thinking about who in the world we\u2019re going to trade with. And the second largest population in the world, and the second largest economy, is probably a place that we need to have some sort of a relationship with.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ipsos contacted 2,001 Canadian adults in early December 2025 for the poll.<\/p>\n

Carney will be in China for five days starting Tuesday, marking the first official trip to the country by a Canadian prime minister since 2017.<\/p>\n

He will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the trip, which the Prime Minister\u2019s Office said will build on the two leaders\u2019 first meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea last October.<\/p>\n

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Relations with Beijing plunged to new lows in 2018 after China jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for almost three years, in a move widely seen as retaliation over Canada\u2019s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on U.S. fraud charges.<\/p>\n

While that source of tension was resolved after the three were released in 2021, trade relations have continued to suffer. Canada has imposed a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and a 25 per cent import tax on steel and aluminum over the last two years, in moves that matched the U.S.<\/p>\n

China responded with a 100 per cent tariff on various Canadian agricultural products last March, including canola and peas, plus a 25 per cent levy on pork and seafood products.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s ambassador to Canada has said Chinese tariffs would be removed if Canada dropped its EV tariffs. Political leaders in tariff-hit provinces like Saskatchewan have called on Ottawa to do all it can to get the agricultural tariffs lifted.<\/p>\n

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Since becoming prime minister, Carney has said it\u2019s important to re-engage and \u201creset\u201d with China in the face of Trump\u2019s tariffs. Canada\u2019s foreign policy has subsequently shifted from seeking to isolate China to pursuing a \u201cstrategic relationship\u201d that balances co-operation with competition.<\/p>\n

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Carney said in September 2025 that Ottawa should be \u201cclearer about where we engage\u201d with China \u2014 that Canada could collaborate \u201cdeeply\u201d with Beijing on energy, climate change and basic manufacturing, while maintaining \u201cguardrails\u201d around national security matters.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have to be really careful about our relations with China, to not try to broaden and deepen them, to expose ourselves in the future to even more problems down the road,\u201d said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa who studies Canada-China relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be concerned about what guardrails are going to be set up for the medium and long term and not find ourselves being used by China as a wedge with the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that Carney must ensure Canadian businesses aren\u2019t \u201ctaken to the cleaners\u201d when entering the Chinese market and that \u201cwe can\u2019t let them anywhere near our advanced technologies or artificial intelligence or critical minerals.\u201d<\/p>\n

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McCuaig-Johnston and Kovrig, now a senior advisor to the International Crisis Group, said Carney must also avoid dropping Canada\u2019s EV tariffs in exchange for Chinese tariff relief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Canada does that, then it would hollow out its automobile manufacturing sector within a decade,\u201d Kovrig said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Critics of China and Xi, such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, have told Global News<\/a> that Canada should be careful about deepening economic ties with Beijing. They say the detentions of Kovrig, Spavor and other Canadians in recent years prove China and Hong Kong are \u201cnot safe places\u201d for business and trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we going to reward China for what they\u2019re doing [by doing business with them]? I don\u2019t think that\u2019s OK,\u201d said Andy Wong, president of the Ontario non-profit Canada-Hong Kong Link.<\/p>\n

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Saturday\u2019s Ipsos poll suggests Canadians are more interested in trade deals that prioritize direct benefits to the Canadian economy and cost of living than issues like national security, the environment and human rights.<\/p>\n

Seventy-one per cent of those surveyed said benefits to Canadians are either very or critically important for trading relationships, with 26 per cent considering it a \u201cdeal-breaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of poll respondents said economic opportunity for Canadian businesses should be prioritized.<\/p>\n

That number falls to 60 per cent who put importance on human rights, 52 per cent for national security and 46 per cent in environmental standards and \u201cshared values\u201d between Canada and its trading partners.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCarney defends international trips, says efforts will boost trade and investment opportunities\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Additionally, the poll found just 25 per cent of Canadians agreed that Canada should only pursue \u201cvalues-based trade\u201d agreements with countries that share its values on democracy and human rights, \u201ceven if it means slower economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe other 75 [per cent] is saying, \u2018Look, I know there are issues here, but the most important thing for me is that it pays off for Canada in terms of our economic interests, and it\u2019s going to pay off for people like me personally,’\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in times of plenty, when people don\u2019t feel they\u2019re under threat, the values arguments become more important in the conversation. But \u2026 Donald Trump has moved this conversation to a different place that people have become more self-interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Kovrig warned those values shouldn\u2019t be ignored while pursuing trade with China.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic interaction with China now comes with a much higher price tag of measures you have to take to protect democracy, human rights, security and sovereign independence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Just under 20 per cent of Canadians surveyed by Ipsos said Canada should trade with countries that have different values in order to use trade as leverage for human rights improvements.<\/p>\n

A near-equal number, 18 per cent, said Canada should pursue \u201cpragmatic trade\u201d that disregards the human rights records and domestic politics of trading partners, so long as the agreements offer mutual economic benefits.<\/p>\n

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Just 16 per cent said they supported protectionist policies that would see Canada focus on domestic production while reducing reliance on international trade.<\/p>\n

\u2014 with files from Global\u2019s David Akin and The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between Dec. 5 and 11, 2025 as part of our Trump, Tariffs, and Turmoil syndicated study. For this survey, a sample of n=2,001 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online, via the Ipsos I-Say panel and non-panel sources, and respondents earn a nominal incentive for their participation. Quotas and weighting were employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample\u2019s composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos polls, which include non-probability sampling, is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within \u00b1 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians 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. Ipsos abides by the disclosure standards established by the CRIC, found here: https:\/\/canadianresearchinsightscouncil.ca\/standards\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to travel to China and seeks to restore trade and diplomatic ties,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,2065,512,164,215258,31866,84,576,1720],"class_list":{"0":"post-406023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-ipsos-poll","15":"tag-mark-carney","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-trade","18":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}