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By self-reporting their happiness at greater than seven out of 10 on average, a significant increase over last year, Canadians are at their cheeriest and most optimistic place in several years, according to a new poll.

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It is a tricky thing to measure, but these findings are the latest in the novel science of happiness studies, which has grown rapidly from a niche academic interest into a major factor in economic policy development, including an important new priority of Statistics Canada.

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“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that things in the country overall are closer to the pre-pandemic norm,” said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president, Central Canada, for Leger, which conducted the new poll.

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It found the happiest provinces are Quebec, by a wide margin of almost five points, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick.

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“There’s something about Quebec, they love the moment,” Enns said. “It’s a cultural trait.”

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The happiest cities are Montreal, Brampton, and Toronto. The least happy provinces are Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and the least happy of the ten largest cities are Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Ottawa.

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Financial pressure was the most common barrier to happiness that people reported, at 57 per cent of respondents, followed by physical health at 32 per cent, and mental health and uncertainty about the future, both at 23 per cent. The political situation, work-life balance, the cost of leisure activities, and loneliness were also common answers.

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But with such robust findings of widespread happiness, buoyed by a comparable sense of optimism for the future, the poll suggests that happiness for Canadians rests on “deeply human dimensions,” as Leger’s report calls them, such as caring for one’s health, maintaining close friendships, trusting neighbours, having a sense of purpose, and feeling secure.

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The comparison with last year’s version of the same poll is particularly revealing for how the state of the world at large can affect individual happiness, Enns said.

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“When you look at what 2025 was presenting the country, we had (U.S. President Donald) Trump in full flight, we had a federal election under way, we had gone from a very unpopular prime minister to one who turned out to be very popular,” Enns said in an interview.

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But the poll also shows people tend to evaluate their own happiness on an extremely local level. “People may think the world is going to hell in a handbasket,” Enns said, “but the closer your perspective gets, the better it seems.”

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“Happiness to some degree is reflected by your community around you, your local group of peers, whether neighbours, colleagues. There’s a sense of trust, reliance, comfort in that support,” Enns said. Being able to say hello to a neighbour when you take out the garbage, or feeling that you trust the people around you, “some of those things bring as much happiness as having money left over from a paycheque…. That’s how people can report high happiness, while also expressing pessimism about the world.”