Canadians take part in an 'Elbows Up, Canada!' rally in Nova Scotia in April, 2025.Darren Calabrese/Reuters

Michael Adams is the founder and president of the Environics Institute for Survey Research. Andrew Parkin is the Institute’s executive director.

Nationalism has many different forms, from benign feelings of pride to aggressive chauvinism. Some speak idealistically of civic nationalism, quizzically of economic nationalism, or suspiciously of ethnic nationalism. And in Canada, there is Quebec nationalism and the search for greater autonomy by a myriad of Indigenous nations. All of these made their mark in the past year, and will continue to shape events in 2026.

Let’s start with the basic idea of national self-determination – that a people have the right to govern themselves and chart their own future. Who would have thought that, for Canadians, this principle would ever been called into question? But while we may have been prepared for another round of “America first” protectionism following the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January, the U.S. President’s sudden interest in annexation caught us by surprise.

The idea that Canada might cease to exist as a sovereign country provoked a strong reaction: many Canadians postponed or cancelled plans to travel to the U.S., stopped buying American wine or bourbon, or relentlessly searched for “Product of Canada” labels in grocery stores. Our surveys picked the highest unfavourable opinion of the United States in over four decades of polling, a growing recognition that our neighbour was behaving more as an enemy than as a friend, and – most decisively – an almost universal rejection of Mr. Trump’s proposal that Canada become the 51st American state.

Our sense of national pride, however, experienced only a modest boost. In the spring of this year, the proportion saying they are very proud to be Canadian rebounded from a previous low, but remained below the levels seen in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s or 2010s. Most Canadians are at least somewhat proud of their nationality, but for some, less emphatically so than in earlier decades. This is especially true of Conservatives, who lament the direction the country took after their party lost power in 2015. Most Conservatives would still reject Mr. Trump’s overtures, but that rejection has not been strong enough to........

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