Canadians have faith in U.S. as a reliable ally but less trusting of Biden: poll

The Canadian portion of the survey was conducted by telephone with 1,324 respondents between Feb. 14 and April 24, and carries a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

Canadians are growing more confident in the United States as a trusted and reliable international ally, but losing faith in the man who’s currently running the country, a new poll suggests.

In the Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, only 61 per cent of Canadian respondents said they have confidence in President Joe Biden to do the right thing on the world stage _ a steep decline from the 77 per cent who said the same thing in 2021.

At the same time, 84 per cent of Canadians who took part said they consider the U.S. a somewhat or very reliable partner _ a 16-point increase over the previous year, with 21 per cent describing their southern neighbour as very reliable, compared with 11 per cent in 2021.

Those results are broadly in line with the centre’s findings in other countries around the world, and likely reflect ongoing momentum following Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, said Richard Wike, Pew’s director of global attitudes research.

“That reliability measure is definitely one where we’ve seen some movement in a positive direction, with more people _ including in Canada _ saying that the U.S. is a more reliable partner,” Wike said.

“Last year it was positive, and it’s even more so this time around.”

For Biden, however, Pew found precisely the opposite, although Wike said that probably represents a cooling of post-Trump euphoria than outright disappointment in Biden’s performance to date.

“Last year, he benefited in a lot of places, in part, from not being Trump, who was very unpopular in most of these countries,” Wike said.