Canada's Relationships with Other Countries

In 2025, Canadians find themselves facing a much less certain international situation than they have been used to. Some of this is due to the persistence of conflicts in Ukraine, and in Israel and Gaza, and the wider threats they pose to international peace and security. Some of this is due to the cooling of relations with influential countries such as China and India. And much of it is the result of the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House, with his protectionist policies and annexationist rhetoric. Canadians are used to being overlooked by U.S. administrations. In recent months, they have discovered that this is preferable to being the target of a president who has described Canada as “mean and nasty.”

These events have sharply impacted how Canadians see their relations with several other countries. In particular, the United States, Russia, China, India and Israel are all much less likely to be perceived as friends of Canada today than they were several years ago. The change is especially striking in the case of the United States. The proportion of Canadians who think of the U.S. as a friend is less than half of what it was a little more than a decade ago, prior to Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Read the report

Key findings

Canada’s relationship with the United States

• Following the return of Donald Trump to the White House for a second term as U.S. president, only a minority of Canadians (36%) see the United States as our friend. The proportion seeing the U.S. as our enemy, which a little over a decade ago stood at only one percent, has jumped up to 27 percent.

• Canadians are now about as likely to consider the U.S. as a friend of Canada as they are India. And they are now about as likely to consider the U.S. as an enemy of Canada as they are China.

• Men are much more likely than women to consider the U.S. as a friend of Canada and less likely to consider that country as an enemy.

• Among both Liberal Party and NDP supporters, the proportion that sees the U.S. as an enemy outweighs then proportion seeing that country as a friend. The pattern is very different among supporters of the Conservative Party; in this case, many more see the U.S. as a friend than as an enemy.

• Two in three Canadians (66%) now say that they have a very or somewhat unfavourable view of the United States, compared to 28 percent whose view is either somewhat or very favourable. These results are essentially unchanged from the spring and are the most negative since this question was first asked in 1982.

• Among supporters of the main federal political parties, opinions of the U.S. are heavily unfavourable – with one exception. A majority of Conservative Party supporters continue to hold a favourable opinion of the United States.

Canada’s relationships with other countries

• The proportion of Canadians who consider Russia to be an enemy of Canada has increased five-fold since 2013, from 10 to 52 percent. This shift started prior to the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and continued afterwards.

• There has been a sharp decline since 2020 in the proportion of Canadians who see India as a friend of Canada, from 66 to 39 percent.

• The proportion of Canadians who see China as a friend of Canada is now only half of what it was in 2013 (falling from 49% to 25%).

• Canadians are much less likely today than in 2013 to see Israel as a friend of Canada, with the proportion holding this view dropping by 25 points, from 56 to 31 percent.

The Focus Canada survey is based on telephone interviews conducted (via landline and cellphones) with a representative sample of 2,004 Canadians (ages 18 and over), between September 8 and 21, 2025. A sample of this size drawn from the population produces results accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.

For more information, contact Dr. Andrew Parkin.