As Prime Minister Mark Carney prepares to travel to China and seeks to restore trade and diplomatic ties, a small majority of Canadians say they support more trade with Beijing, a new poll suggests.
The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News, released Saturday, found that 54 per cent expressed support for closer trade ties and economic agreements with China.
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 “two Michaels.”
Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, says the new poll’s results “are less about China and more about the United States” and the economic realities of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.
“The reason that it’s bounced back is not all of a sudden people have fallen in love with China, which is why the numbers are soft,” Bricker said in an interview.
“The reason that they’ve bounced back is because people are thinking about who in the world we’re 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.”
Ipsos contacted 2,001 Canadian adults in early December 2025 for the poll.
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.
He will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the trip, which the Prime Minister’s Office said will build on the two leaders’ first meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea last October.
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’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on U.S. fraud charges.
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.
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.
China’s 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.
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Since becoming prime minister, Carney has said it’s important to re-engage and “reset” with China in the face of Trump’s tariffs. Canada’s foreign policy has subsequently shifted from seeking to isolate China to pursuing a “strategic relationship” that balances co-operation with competition.
Carney said in September 2025 that Ottawa should be “clearer about where we engage” with China — that Canada could collaborate “deeply” with Beijing on energy, climate change and basic manufacturing, while maintaining “guardrails” around national security matters.
“We 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,” said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa who studies Canada-China relations.
“We 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.”
She added that Carney must ensure Canadian businesses aren’t “taken to the cleaners” when entering the Chinese market and that “we can’t let them anywhere near our advanced technologies or artificial intelligence or critical minerals.”
McCuaig-Johnston and Kovrig, now a senior advisor to the International Crisis Group, said Carney must also avoid dropping Canada’s EV tariffs in exchange for Chinese tariff relief.
“If Canada does that, then it would hollow out its automobile manufacturing sector within a decade,” Kovrig said in an interview.
Critics of China and Xi, such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, have told Global News 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 “not safe places” for business and trade.
“Are we going to reward China for what they’re doing [by doing business with them]? I don’t think that’s OK,” said Andy Wong, president of the Ontario non-profit Canada-Hong Kong Link.
Economic benefits vs ‘shared values’?
Saturday’s 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.
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 “deal-breaker.”
Two-thirds of poll respondents said economic opportunity for Canadian businesses should be prioritized.
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 “shared values” between Canada and its trading partners.
Additionally, the poll found just 25 per cent of Canadians agreed that Canada should only pursue “values-based trade” agreements with countries that share its values on democracy and human rights, “even if it means slower economic growth.”
“The other 75 [per cent] is saying, ‘Look, 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’s going to pay off for people like me personally,’” Bricker said.
“I think in times of plenty, when people don’t feel they’re under threat, the values arguments become more important in the conversation. But … Donald Trump has moved this conversation to a different place that people have become more self-interested.”
Still, Kovrig warned those values shouldn’t be ignored while pursuing trade with China.
“Economic 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,” he said.
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.
A near-equal number, 18 per cent, said Canada should pursue “pragmatic trade” that disregards the human rights records and domestic politics of trading partners, so long as the agreements offer mutual economic benefits.
Just 16 per cent said they supported protectionist policies that would see Canada focus on domestic production while reducing reliance on international trade.
— with files from Global’s David Akin and The Canadian Press
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’s 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 ± 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/
