Authors: Dr. Gerard Kennedy & Erin Jeon
A poll from the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) last autumn casts interesting insights on the perception of the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada’s constitutional order.
The majority of Canadians (62%) believe the Supreme Court to be impartial, versus 22% who consider Canada’s highest court to be “biased.”1 Moreover, 65% believe that law is a greater consideration than politics in the decisions the Supreme Court makes.2 Despite a belief in the Court’s impartiality, just under half (49%) of Canadians have confidence in the Court, while 42% do not.3
Overall, Canadians’ knowledge about the Supreme Court is passable. A majority of Canadians polled correctly said it’s “false” that judges can be politically active (56%) and can accept gifts from parties involved in cases they are presiding over (87%).4 However, a significant portion of Canadians do not believe that judges are appointed for life (30%), are unsure whether term limits for judges exist (31%), and either believe that judges can hold other jobs or run a business (12%) or are uncertain about it (45%).5
Furthermore, the ability to identify Canadian Supreme Court Justices is lacking. In a list with three Supreme Court Justices and three decoy names, nearly a third of Canadians (31%) failed to correctly identify a single justice correctly, with 43% identifying one correct justice, 16% identifying two justices, and only 9% correctly identifying all three justices.6 This is in stark contrast to Americans’ knowledge of the Supreme Court of the United States: 38% of respondents correctly identified all three justices, while only 7% failed to identify a justice.7
Access to justice depends on the public viewing courts as independent and impartial. And faith in the depoliticization of the Supreme Court is reasonably strong in Canada. While just over one-third of respondents (36%) believe justices are appointed due to their political leanings, nearly an identical number (35%) do not believe this to be the case; the remaining 29% do not know whether this is the case.8 The majority of Canadians believe the Supreme Court to be completely impartial (10%) or mostly impartial (52%).9 Furthermore, a significant majority of respondents (65%) believe that the law, rather than politics, is the foremost consideration in Supreme Court decisions.10
Regarding the justices’ political leanings, 28% of respondents believe the majority of justices to be more liberal than conservative; 7% believe they are more conservative than liberal; 24% do not think they lean left or right; and 41% are unsure of the justices’ political leaning.11 These statistics vary greatly depending on the respondents’ political party: for instance, 55% of Conservatives believe the majority of Supreme Court justices lean left, while only 9% of Liberal and NDP respondents say the same.12 Overall, nearly half (49%) of Canadians have confidence in the Supreme Court, while 42% do not. This is down considerably from ARI’s 2015 poll on similar issues, where 61% of Canadians said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Supreme Court.13
Public confidence in the judiciary is crucial for access to justice. If Canadians have no confidence in the judiciary, they may refuse or neglect to access the courts or the judicial system, therefore limiting access to justice and undermining the rule of law.14 Court orders and mandates may be ignored if judicial legitimacy is not perceived; partnership with the judicial system is also hampered if there is no belief in the court’s legitimacy.15 Decreased faith in democracy may follow a loss of confidence in the judiciary; the courts uphold democracy, and without democracy there is no free court system and therefore inadequate access to justice. Such developments would not only impede access to justice but undermine the rule of law.
At the same time, while the numbers from this poll are generally positive, they are not as high as one would like—or has generally been the case in the past. As one of us has noted before, to the extent that faith in the Supreme Court is decreased, it reflects a “loss of faith in ‘elite’ institutions generally across the Western world, especially in the Western world.”16 Countering this is difficult. The Supreme Court’s outreach efforts may be a small step in that direction.17 Though they can be criticized for not being at the core of the Court’s role, their motivations are laudable. And ARI’s recent poll suggests some sort of public education is necessary. Those who know more about the judicial system tend to have more confidence in it.18 The strength of the judiciary, and by extension the strength of the public’s confidence in the judiciary, is critical for a resilient democracy. Steps must be taken to ensure public confidence in the system.
- Angus Reid Institute, SCOC: Most Say Canada’s Top Court is Impartial, but One-Third Say Politics Play Into Judicial Appointments (Angus Reid Institute, 2024) at 1. ↩︎
- Ibid at 9. ↩︎
- Ibid at 10. ↩︎
- Ibid at 4. ↩︎
- Ibid at 4. ↩︎
- Ibid at 6. ↩︎
- Ibid at 6. ↩︎
- Ibid at 4. ↩︎
- Ibid at 7. ↩︎
- Ibid at 9. ↩︎
- Ibid at 8. ↩︎
- Ibid at 8. ↩︎
- Angus Reid Institute, Canadians Have a More Favourable View of Their Supreme Court than Americans Have of Their Own (Angus Reid Institute, 2015) at 2. ↩︎
- David F Levi et al., “Losing Faith: Why Public Trust in the Judiciary Matters” (Durham: Duke University School of Law, 2022) 106:2 Judicature. ↩︎
- Ibid; Susan McDonald et al., Public Confidence in the Justice System (Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada, 2008) at 15. ↩︎
- Cristin Schmitz, “Public Has Low Confidence in Criminal Courts; Believes Politics Influences SCC Appointments: Poll” (20 November 2024), online: <law360.ca/ca/articles/2262716/public-has-low-confidence-in-criminal-courts-believes-politics-influences-scc-appointments-poll>. ↩︎
- Supreme Court of Canada, “Outreach to Canadians” (last modified 15 May 2025), online: <scc-csc.ca/about-apropos/work-travail/outreach-sensibilisation/>. ↩︎
- Andrea Lawlor & Erin Crandall, “Longstanding Canadian Confidence in the Judicial System May Be on Shaky Ground” (24 August 2024), online: <policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2023/judicial-system-confidence/>. ↩︎
The views expressed in these blogs do not necessarily reflect the views of the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and should not be construed as legal advice or endorsement.