The poll comes as premiers gather for the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax this week
The poll asked whether respondents feel some provinces receive more from or give more to the rest of Canada than others relative to areas including investment, respect, and power.
Twenty-three per cent of respondents from across Canada indicated Alberta gives more than it gets from the rest of Canada, the most of any province.
That sentiment was echoed by roughly half of respondents in each of Alberta (47 per cent) and Saskatchewan (54 per cent), but by only 11 per cent of Quebecers.
Ontario (16 per cent) and Saskatchewan (13 per cent) were the next highest provinces that respondents indicated were getting less back from Canada than they put in, while Quebec (42 per cent) was the province most seen to be getting an extra advantage from being part of Canada.
General dissatisfaction was highest in the western provinces with at least four-in-five residents in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba saying that “Ottawa always favours Ontario and Quebec,” according to the survey.
That sense of dissatisfaction often registered highest with residents of Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Saskatchewan respondents most often indicated (72 per cent) that federal government policies have hurt their province’s economy, followed by Alberta at 65 per cent.
Conversely, that figure also represents the biggest change in response from any province since Angus Reid last performed the survey in 2019, when 82 per cent of Alberta respondents stated Ottawa was hurting the provincial economy.
Alberta also had the second highest “net alienation score,” calculated by the pollster as the difference between those believing their province gets an advantage over others in Canada, and those who say they get a raw deal.
That formula resulted in a minus 41 per cent alienation score for Alberta, behind only Saskatchewan at minus 55 per cent.
Alberta was the only place where satisfaction with the way things are going within a province increased since the 2019 survey, up by 16 per cent, while the same measure fell by as much as 14 per cent in other parts of the country.
Ontario was the only province where a majority of respondents (52 per cent) said their province was treated fairly by the federal government.
Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax
The poll comes as premiers gather for the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax this week.
The survey was self-commissioned by the Angus Reid Institute and was conducted online over four days last week among a representative randomized sample of 2,021 Canadian adults.