Susan Delacourt: As the next wave of COVID-19 grows, Canadians are grappling with fear and nostalgia

Canada appears to have reached the “somebody-do-something” stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the public is not quite yet at the “I’ll-do-anything” threshold to stop the second wave of the virus.

That gap is fuelling the exasperation we now see simmering as the COVID-19 crisis enters its ninth month, when politicians and the public seem to be trading laments over who is not doing enough to get the pandemic under control.

Citizens want a show of political will; the politicians want citizens to exercise more willpower.

This tension also turns up in a new poll from Earnscliffe Research, which shows where Canadians’ opinion has moved from the first wave to the second wave of the pandemic. There are lots of hints in here too, the Earnscliffe opinion analysts say, of some future waves of turbulence stretching into 2021.

Allan Gregg, one of the lead pollsters for this newest research, believes that the current public-opinion climate on COVID-19 creates a potential breeding ground for more blame-trading in the weeks and months ahead. Canadians have accepted the rules, by and large, but now they are looking for the return on that investment.

“We tend to be relatively deferential to authority and rules. We seek compromises over extremism, and are often prepared to put the good of the collective over the convenience of the self,” Gregg said.

“But it also strikes me that this mindset is triggered to place blame if others who are managing the pandemic do not perform in a similar fashion. Don’t assume that the near across-the-board support we have been seeing for our political leadership during the pandemic will necessarily last.”

Fear about the future and nostalgia for pre-COVID-19 times is substantially up from where it was when Earnscliffe polled nearly 2,000 people in May. But satisfaction with political leaders and public-health officials is almost universally down, this second-wave survey shows.

The drop in support for authority figures in the pandemic was probably inevitable.

COVID-19’s resurgence this fall has forced leaders to make tougher choices — what to keep open, what to keep shut — and speak more difficult truths to Canadians about the endurance of the virus.

Some of that truth is sinking in with people more in this second wave than it did in the first, according to this newest research.

On the upside, for instance, the poll shows that people are taking far more personal ownership over COVID-19 prevention than they did in the spring, with huge increases in support for public-health measures such as physical distancing, wearing masks and limits or bans on gatherings.

All those repeated warnings have evidently crept in to the public psyche. Back in May, Earnscliffe’s pollsters found only 41 per cent backing for mandatory masks. But that’s up to 73 per cent support this fall.

Vaccinations, however, are another matter. The poll shows major support for the idea in theory, but in practice, a full 65 per cent say they are concerned about the safety of a vaccine, and a disturbing 30 per cent of respondents lodged reservations about whether they would even get a vaccination when it becomes available.

Doug Anderson, an Earnscliffe principal who also gathered and analyzed these findings, sees them as a possible preview of some “robust debates” to come.

“There is, and will continue to be, a lot of hand-wringing over vaccine hesitancy,” Anderson says. “We have a situation where the vast majority acknowledge it will be a game-changer in a positive way, but that doesn’t mean they are completely at ease about its safety. A strong majority intend to get vaccinated when it is approved and available to them, but that doesn’t mean they are not at least a little wary.”

COVID-19’s second wave appears to have made people even more cautious about everything and everyone associated with it.

Confidence in public health officials is down to just 51 per cent, a decline of eight percentage points since Earnscliffe last polled on this question, and almost every political leader has taken a hit in approval from spring to fall.

Justin Trudeau is still seen to be doing an excellent or good job by 58 per cent of the poll’s respondents, but that’s nine percentage points lower than the prime minister’s ratings in the spring.

Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney have seen the sharpest declines in their approval from first to second wave — down 19 percentage points for Ford and a whopping 21-point drop for Kenney.

But Ford was flying a lot higher than the Alberta premier in the first wave of COVID-19, so Ontario’s leader still enjoys a 64 per cent favourable rating. Kenney, by contrast, scores a dismal 33 per cent of people who say he has been doing a good or excellent job through the crisis.

COVID-19’s resurgence seems to have dulled people’s optimism about an end to the pandemic too — nearly 40 per cent of respondents believe that the wait for a vaccine will be longer than a year, or possibly never.

Pessimism is a drumbeat under many of the results in this poll, which was conducted online last month among 1,940 Canadians, before the news of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines hit the news in the past couple of weeks. (Margin of error cannot be calculated in online polling.)

More than six out of every 10 people — 62 per cent — report that they are frightened about the future and a full 67 per cent say they wish “everything would go back the way it was.”

But at the same time, paradoxically, the poll found an equally large number of people who said the pandemic represented an opportunity to make big changes in the world — the don’t-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste crowd.

“Canadians continue to be preoccupied with the pandemic and believe this is the biggest crisis Canada has faced since the Second World War,” said Stephanie Constable, a public-opinion specialist with Earnscliffe.

“Yet, while two-thirds of Canadians just want everything to go back to the way it was — up nine percentage points — this pandemic has presented Canadians with the opportunity to reflect on their values and priorities and three-quarters see this crisis as an opportunity to make some major changes to Canadian society.”

What looks like a contradiction here, at least in my opinion, could be people sorting priorities. They want life to return to normal on the personal front, but they want the larger world to change for the better when it’s all over — a payoff for the sacrifice.

The poll also produced some pretty clear answers on who are the good guys and bad guys in this long-running drama.

The good guys? Front-line medical professionals, who are judged to be doing an excellent or good job by a resounding 91 per cent of respondents.

The bad guys? The owners and operators of long-term-care facilities, who only managed to elicit 29 per cent approval. The stories of COVID-19’s rampage through these residences have burned into the public’s memory. A full 79 per cent “clearly recall” news of the outbreaks in long-term-care homes and 64 per cent said their view of these facilities has worsened.

If politicians are looking for marching orders in this poll, in fact, they will find them in the results about long-term care. More than three-quarters of respondents said they backed more regulation at these homes and more than 80 per cent were heartily in favour of national standards and boosts in government investments and personal-care staff.

Radical options to fixing long-term care find people more divided. Just over half of respondents said they would prefer non-profit ownership of long-term-care homes and just less than half said they wanted to see governments take them over.

Earnscliffe’s researchers were all struck by how the poll’s respondents zeroed in on long-term care as a flashpoint in the pandemic. If federal and provincial politicians are seeing the same kind of numbers in their polling, they will be feeling pressure to act on these concerns in the near future. Don’t be surprised if the subject comes up when first ministers meet in early December to talk about health care.

By December, Canadians will have been living with COVID for nearly a year — one that has seen some remarkable shifts in thinking from first wave to the second one. Maybe unsurprisingly, there are bundles of contradictions showing up in this polling: people feeling simultaneous hope and fear about the future, accepting of limits on their lives but wary of vaccinations. They’re giving record levels of approval to politicians, but growing more skeptical as the months drag on.

It’s a demonstration, perhaps, that the only thing more difficult to predict than COVID will be the public’s opinion as the pandemic stretches into the new year.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt