As governments begin to ease restrictions across the country, our latest polling shows Canadians are conflicted on this matter. On one hand, more are engaging in risky behaviours. On the other hand, they are getting nervous about the pace of easing restrictions.
More people are reporting higher risk activities compared to early May. We see a 23-point increase in those who report engaging in a higher-risk activity in the last week. Middle-risk activities also see an uptick of 12-points since early May. These are by far the biggest changes we have seen since we began tracking behaviour in the beginning of the outbreak in late March.
As social contacts increase, we find Canadians have reduced the frequency of some key precautions. Canadians are less likely to be keeping the 2 meter social distance and they are washing their hands less frequently. This is true even in provinces like Quebec and Ontario that are still seeing 100s of new cases a day.
The one bit of good news in terms of precautions is we now have more people reporting the use of masks. In our latest tracking, close to half (45%) say they wear a mask outside all or most of the time. It compares to only 26% saying the same in mid-April.
Canadians are getting more nervous. While most are comfortable with the current pace of easing restrictions, an increasing number say that governments are moving too fast in their steps to ease restrictions. Compared to mid-May, those saying the federal government is easing restrictions too fast is up 7 points to 27%.
For full details on these results download our report here.
