Understanding the trade-offs shaping Canada’s energy debate

When Canadians think about energy, many don’t start from a fixed position. Angus Reid’s latest national study found the largest group takes a balanced, case-by-case approach.

The largest group of respondents (39%) described their views as balanced or dependent on the circumstances, while nearly half said they feel torn or are still weighing the trade-offs involved in Canada’s energy future. Even respondents who identified as development-first or emissions-first frequently expressed concerns associated with the other perspective.

Public opinion is less settled than headlines often imply. Canadians are weighing affordability, energy security, environmental impacts, jobs, reliability and local effects at the same time, and the balance shifts depending on the issue.

Looking beyond simple “support” or “opposition”

Energy research often begins by measuring support for a proposal. That’s useful, but it doesn’t explain why people arrived at that answer.

We found that many Canadians don’t carry a fixed position from one energy issue to the next. They evaluate individual projects differently depending on the costs, expected benefits, environmental impacts and who they believe will be affected.

The conversational follow-up responses added context to those findings. Rather than expressing unconditional support or opposition, participants often described weighing competing priorities. Some participants described supporting energy development while also raising environmental concerns. Others supported emissions reductions while also worrying about the impact on household costs.

Affordability is common ground

Nearly nine in ten Canadians said keeping energy affordable is essential or very important, making affordability the highest-rated priority in the survey ahead of jobs, emissions reduction and grid reliability. It was also one of the few issues that drew broad agreement across political and ideological lines.

Affordability sits alongside environmental impacts, reliability and economic considerations in how many Canadians evaluate energy issues.

For energy companies, affordability can’t be treated as a secondary consideration. People want to understand what a project means for household costs, their community and how the costs and benefits will be shared.

AI is creating a new energy conversation

While relatively few Canadians ranked supporting AI infrastructure among the country’s top energy priorities, a majority also said they support AI while worrying about the electricity, water and local impacts of large data centres.

Canadians approach AI infrastructure much the same way they approach other energy issues. Many support the technology while also asking about electricity demand, water use and local impacts.

Who delivers the information matters

There are clear differences in whom Canadians trust to provide information about energy trade-offs. Independent experts, scientists and engineers ranked well ahead of governments, energy companies and technology companies. Technology companies and data centre operators received the lowest trust scores.

For energy companies, those trust differences shape the starting point for conversations about new projects. The survey suggests people place greater confidence in information from independent experts than from organizations with a direct stake in the outcome.

Asking better questions

Many of the themes in this study became clearer when participants had the opportunity to explain why they answered the way they did. The conversational responses added context to the survey findings by showing how people weighed competing priorities. This is one reason Angus Reid increasingly combines representative quantitative research with conversational follow-up questions that allow participants to explain their thinking in their own words. In this study, open-ended responses were collected using Rival Technologies’ conversational AI probing technology, allowing participants to expand on their answers through tailored follow-up questions while maintaining the scale of a nationally representative survey.

Methodology

The research was conducted through the Angus Reid Forum’s Canadian National Omnibus from July 2 to 4, 2026, among a representative sample of 1,512 Canadian adults. Results were weighted to align with Canadian census demographics.