REGINA, Sask. — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first 16 months in office appear to have come as a pleasant surprise to many Saskatchewan voters.
The Angus Reid Institute released results Thursday morning from an online survey conducted Sept. 2-7, showing 47 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents strongly or moderately approve of Carney’s job performance.
While that approval rating remains the lowest among Canadian provinces, it also marks a near-doubling of support for Carney and the Liberals, who received 26.6 per cent of Saskatchewan’s popular vote in the April 2025 federal election.
Thursday’s data further suggests Carney’s increasing provincial popularity now rivals that of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, with 49 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents reporting a favourable or very favourable view of the opposition leader. No other province recorded more love for Poilievre in the survey, which pegged his national support at 32 per cent.
Poilievre’s Conservatives received 64.6 per cent of the Saskatchewan vote in 2025.
Thursday’s report wasn’t all roses for Carney with respect to Saskatchewan, however, with 32 per cent of the province’s respondents indicating they strongly disapprove of his performance to date — a greater proportion than anywhere else in Canada.
Newly chosen federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis substantially trailed both Carney and Poilievre, with 19 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents reporting a favourable impression of the former MuchMusic host.
Nationally, 46 per cent of respondents said they would vote Liberal if an election were held today, compared with 32 per cent of respondents for the Conservatives.
Among Carney’s supporters nationally are 28 per cent of respondents who said they voted Conservative last year but currently approve of the PM’s performance. Conversely, just five per cent of respondents who said they voted Liberal reported holding a favourable view of Poilievre.
Cost of living, health care top Sask. concerns
The Angus Reid survey also asked respondents for the issues and challenges they care about the most.
In Saskatchewan, the top three areas of concern were cost of living and inflation (cited by 59 per cent of the province’s respondents), health care (41 per cent) and the economy (32 per cent) — exceeding the Canada-wide figures (55, 36 and 24 per cent respectively) on each of those issues.
U.S. relations (including tariffs) were cited as an issue of interest by 21 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents, tied with Alberta for the lowest level of concern of any Canadian jurisdiction covered by the survey.
Saskatchewan also tied with B.C. in expressing the least concern nationwide for income inequality and poverty — an area of interest to 10 per cent of respondents in both provinces.
The survey received responses from 1,811 adults across Canada, including 145 from Saskatchewan. Provincial data was provided for B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, with Atlantic Canada presented as a single region.
