Nearly 20 per cent of Canadians do not trust Statistics Canada to protect personal data the federal government agency collects, while 25 per cent say they do not believe the agency operates free of political influence, according to internal government polling obtained by Global News.
Among other findings, the polling shows that 62 per cent of Canadians believe Statistics Canada’s data to be reliable but 12.6 per cent did not believe in the agency’s ability to “get it right when it comes to data about the economy, society and environment.”
More than one in five, or 23 per cent, were unsure either way.
The data clearly show that Statistics Canada has some work to do to improve its image and reputation among some Canadians, a job that will be made more difficult because, like all government departments, Statistics Canada is in the midst of a belt-tightening exercise to reduce expenses and staff.
Statistics Canada, which has a budget of about $950 million this year, has been directed to find $340 million in savings over the next four years.
The polling, recently released to Global News as a result of an access to information request, was conducted late last fall at the request of Statistics Canada, which had nine different questions about the agency inserted into the weekly internal government polling program run by the Privy Council Office (PCO).
Statistics Canada spokesperson Carter Mann said the agency wanted to better understand how the public felt about Statistics Canada’s competence and independence. The agency also had a particular interest in Canadians’ knowledge about the Labour Force Survey (LFS), one of the country’s cornerstone economic datasets relied on, for example, by the Bank of Canada to make decisions about interest rates.
“The ability of the LFS to deliver an accurate and representative picture of the Canadian labour market depends on widespread participation from selected households,” Mann said in a statement e-mailed to Global News.
“Trust and understanding are therefore essential factors in the decision to respond to surveys.”
Broadly speaking, the polling showed that most Canadians gave Statistics Canada good to excellent marks but there were some data points that showed clear work to do.
For example, when survey respondents were asked if they had ever heard of the Labour Force Survey, nearly two-thirds, or 65.5 per cent, said “no,” while 32.5 per cent said “yes.”
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The LFS, usually published on the first Friday of every month, contains closely watched economic indicators such as national and regional employment/unemployment rates and labour force participation.
The PCO polling program uses live agents who use telephone calls to landlines and cellphones to collect their data. The current PCO pollster is Forum Research Inc. Each weekly poll is designed by the Privy Council Office under the supervision of political staff in the Prime Minister’s Office. Forum surveys 1,000 Canadians every week on behalf of the PCO.
The survey conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 2, 2025, turned up some troubling results for Statistics Canada.
For example, nearly one in five, or 18.7 per cent, told the pollster they do not trust StatCan to protect the privacy of their personal information from other federal government departments or law enforcement agencies.
In fact, not only does federal law prevent StatCan from sharing any data, even with the police, but the data it collects is stripped of personal identifiers, anonymized and encrypted.
Meanwhile, more than one in four, or 25.1 per cent, do not believe Statistics Canada operates free of political influence, while just 49.6 per cent believe it does.
That finding from last fall appeared to be reflected this spring during the 2026 Census when an online campaign sprang up among those who distrust Statistics Canada, which encouraged people to mark mandatory census forms received in the mail with “Return To Sender” and other comments critical of the federal government.
Randall Bartlett, the deputy chief economist at Desjardins Group, said the issues around trust and data reliability are not unique to Canada and that federal statistics agencies around the world are grappling with low response rates to surveys and an erosion of faith that they operate independently.
“I think Canadian data is still very good in terms of quality, relatively speaking,” Bartlett said in an interview. “I think we’re seeing this broad trend in declining data quality around the world and StatsCan still is one of the most credible statistical agencies on the planet.”
Bartlett is the co-author of a recent Desjardins Group report that took a close look at the reliability of Statistics Canada’s data after a StatCan report on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) surprised many professional forecasters, including Bartlett and those at the Bank of Canada.
“The causes of this problem are wide-ranging. Increased challenges in data collection, greater swings in underlying population data, fewer resources available to collect and compile the information and a resulting reliance on imputed data are all to blame. Some of these challenges can be overcome with more funding. But others, like concern related to trust in public institutions, may be a more intractable problem.”
In the last year, concerns about the reliability of StatCan’s findings has come up at different House of Commons committees.
At an April 22 meeting of the Citizenship and Immigration committee, for example, an official with the economic development agency for Drummondville, Que., testified that data StatCan was publishing about the unemployment rate for the census metropolitan area of Drummond was not accurate.
“It is often completely at odds with our observations on the ground,” Julie Biron of Drummond Économique told the committee.
Biron turned to researchers at the Université du Quebec à Trois-Rivières and at the Institut de la statistique du Québec to validate Drummond Économique’s observation that StatCan was reporting an unemployment rate for the CMA that was nearly twice what they had found.
Employers in high unemployment regions — as StatCan described the Drummond CMA — are required to complete local labour market assessments before hiring temporary foreign workers.
But the Drummond economic development agency, which represents many employers, was arguing the CMA had a much lower unemployment rate and, as a result, should be exempt from costly and time-consuming local labour-market surveys. The accuracy, then, of local employment data was having a direct impact on Drummond’s businesses.
At a meeting of the Agriculture and Agri-Food committee on Nov. 3, Dalhousie professor Sylvain Charlebois expressed skepticism about Statistics Canada’s food inflation data.
“We believe that inflation often is underestimated by Statistics Canada,” Charlebois told the committee.
“Because of shrinkflation, when you look at the basket of goods, you often see that quantities don’t reflect exactly what’s in the grocery store, for one, and, based on our analysis, Statistics Canada often lags in terms of assessing the true measure of inflation.”
Mann, the Statistics Canada spokesman, said polling results from the fall show that “a majority of Canadians viewed Statistics Canada as an accurate and credible source of information and considered its information understandable and relevant. At the same time, familiarity with the agency and awareness of the Labour Force Survey were lower.”
