In advance of next week’s speech from the throne, we worked with Abacus Data to commission a survey on what Canadians want to see in a COVID-19 recovery plan.

Today, we released the results in a new report.

The survey shows that 54% of Canadians want to see the federal government announce bold new ideas for how to fundamentally improve people’s lives and deal with climate change in next week’s throne speech. Interestingly, the desire for major changes is consistent across Canada and across the political spectrum.

I’m astonished that only 19% of Canadians think the worst of the pandemic is behind us, but not surprised that 65% of us believe the pandemic has highlighted problems with how the economy and social programs are run that require major changes.

Still, it’s heartening to see that the majority of Canadians want a COVID-19 recovery plan that includes many of the issues we are trying to improve here at Broadbent, including:

• Investments to strengthen our health system including universal public pharmacare (70%).
• Focuses on helping people and doesn’t allow corporations to set the agenda and benefit the most from the recovery (67%).
• Increasing or creating new taxes on Canada’s richest people (60%).

You can read the full report on our website