Nearly four in five Canadians are more fearful than hopeful for the year ahead, according to a new Angus Reid survey.
Most Canadians also followed more news, especially from the U.S., in the past year, according to the survey.
Angus Reid Institute surveyed 1,612 adult Canadian members of Angus Reid Forum from Jan. 23 to Jan. 27, the week after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The margin of error was plus or minus two percentage points 19 times out of 20, according to Angus Reid.
The survey asked respondents to give U.S. President Donald Trump a letter grade on the first year of his second term.
Nearly two-thirds of Canadians overall, or 66 per cent, gave Trump an “F” grade on his first year in office this term, the survey said.
But Conservative voters bucked the trend.
Half of the Conservatives surveyed gave Trump a passing grade with a “C” or higher, the survey said. This is in contrast to the 92 per cent of Liberals, 90 per cent of New Democrats, and 79 per cent of Bloc Québécois, who gave the U.S. president a failing grade.
Yejun Shin, a third-year 3D Animation student at Humber Polytechnic, said she would give "worse" than an “F” grade to Trump.
Shin said she’s fearful for the next year and the economy in particular.
As a third-year student, Shin said she’s always worried about her future.
Shin described Trump as “crazy” and “even crazier these days.”
The Angus Reid survey asked Canadians to describe Trump’s second term as well.
The most selected word, by 36 per cent of Canadians, was “corrupt,” followed by “chaotic” and “incompetent,” according to the survey.
Carina Toito Cadete, 26, described the past year’s events as “really unsettling.”
Cadete, a second-year nursing student at Humber, said she was “definitely” fearful for 2026.
She was “not at all” surprised by the “F” grade given for Trump's performance, Cadete said.
“I think it’s kind of foolish to live in this perfect world where you think that it’s going to stop when there’s no sign of stopping,” she said.
Cadete said hearing U.S. news doesn’t affect her much “on a daily basis” as a Canadian, but that it “definitely would” if she were a student in the U.S..
For Cassidy Murray, seeing increased U.S. news has had a similar impact.
Murray, 22, said while events in the U.S. haven’t directly affected them, “it’s definitely on the back of my mind.”
Murray, a third-year 3D Animation student at Humber, said it seemed like “everything” was going poorly.
They also said it was “great” to hear that Canadians gave Trump a failing grade.
Still, Murray said they wanted to be hopeful.
“I feel incredibly privileged, and I’m happy to be in a place that’s safe, and I don’t need to see people being taken from their homes,” they said. “It makes me really grateful to be a Canadian, which is good.
"It’s not all the time that I feel that way," Murray said.
