BURST
When it comes to Canadian opinions on the war in Iran, a new poll finds that a not insignificant portion of the nation’s youngest adults believe Canada should stand with the Iranian regime in defence against the U.S. and its allies.
According to recent Association for Canadian Studies polling, one-fifth (20 per cent) of respondents in the 18-24 cohort said Ottawa should “politically support” the current Iranian leadership.
A paltry eight per cent think the U.S., Israel and other allied nations in the now-three-week-old war are deserving of the same backing.
The student sample also slightly favoured Iran.
Results for older Canadians, meanwhile, were in stark contrast.
When factoring in the poll’s 2.5 per cent margin of error, support for the Iranian regime was virtually zero among those 45-54 (three per cent), 55-64 (one per cent) and the 65-plus Boomers (zero per cent). On average, a quarter of those think Canada ought to bolster its historic allies — 23, 25 and 26 per cent, respectively.
ASC President and CEO Jack Jedwab said he’s troubled by the youth support for the regime whose powerful military arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been deemed a terrorist organization by the Canadian government for almost two years.
“You’ve got one end of the spectrum that’s at zero and you’ve got that other group that’s disproportionately probably more and more susceptible to following direction from influencers on selected social media, which is probably what this is attributable to,” he reasoned in an interview with National Post.
He said further proof of misinformation spreading among the Gen Z cohort is evident in that 32 per cent believe that Iranian Canadians don’t support the military actions against the regime, twice as many as or more than respondents 35 and over. More than half of all respondents said they don’t know.
“Medium to long term, there may be some unlearning that needs to be done amongst persons that are adopting such positions that clearly are not well informed if they think the majority of Iranians are not supporting the Iranian regime,” he said. “That’s incorrect.”
Importantly, across all age groups and employment statuses, half of all respondents said Canada should remain neutral in the escalating conflict, and an average of one-fifth said they don’t know or aren’t sure. That insistence on neutrality and lack of certainty was persistently evident in responses to other poll questions.
“It’s a combination also of our own sort of self-evaluation or assessment of ourselves as the nation that is seeking or desires peaceful solutions and outcomes,” Jedwab surmised.
He highlighted a November 2024 ASC poll, which found that while Canadians were 92 per cent in favour of peace with all nations, about half didn’t think a war could be avoided if one side gave up the fight.
“Things are going to be more complex than that,” Jedwab said. “I think some of that thinking underlies part of the neutrality view.”
The most recent poll also gauged how closely people are paying attention to what’s happening in the Middle East and their understanding of it and compared it to opinions on the collapse of the Iranian regime and Canada’s position.
For those closely following, 29 per cent said Canada should be supporting the U.S. and its allies, while only six per cent feel the same about the terrorist-backed Iranian regime. But again, half of the respondents prefer Canada stay out of it altogether and one tenth just didn’t know.
Similarly, the well-informed are more inclined to believe the fall of the current regime in place of another is a good thing (60 per cent) than are those less dialled in to the goings on (30 per cent), more than half of whom (53 per cent) said they weren’t sure.
“We’re unpacking further what underlies this in terms of the extent to which people self-assess having knowledge or following it or understanding what’s going on,” Jedwab explained.
In the House of Commons last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that “Canada “supports the necessity to prevent Iran’s nuclear program and the export of terrorism, but “will never participate” in the U.S. and Israel’s offensive.
Jedwab said it appears Ottawa is trying to balance the desire for neutrality with some people’s expectation to aid allies.
“That’s a challenging position to take and we’ll see what types of pressure are exerted in the coming days and weeks on the part of the U.S. and its allies for middle powers, or self-described middle powers like Canada, to get more engaged and help those people who prefer greater disengagement to better understand what the stakes are,” he said.
Just about half of respondents (45 per cent) — but only 31 per cent of Millennials — think a diplomatic solution to the war is out of reach. Less than a fifth (18 per cent) think it’s possible but more than a third were unsure.
Asked if he thinks support for the U.S. would be higher were it not for President Donald Trump, Jedwab admitted it was possible, noting the youth cohort is especially drawn by the anti-Trump sentiment, but said it doesn’t change the fact that the IRGC is a terrorist entity.
“That is not something that can be taken lightly at all in trying to see one’s way clearer in this war,” he said.
“It’s something one needs to consider carefully in terms of drawing conclusions about where Canada should stand on this.”
The web poll was conducted by Leger from March 6 to 8, and canvassed 1,579 adults. While a non-probability sample panel survey such as this doesn’t have a margin of error, a similar probability sample of that many respondents would have a margin of error of plus/minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20
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