A majority of Canadians want Ottawa to hold on to the Trans Mountain pipeline rather than sell it, according to a new Angus Reid Institute survey. The poll found 54% would keep the pipeline in federal hands, more than double the 23% who’d rather sell it off and recoup what taxpayers spent, with the remaining 23% undecided.
Canadians increasingly favor public ownership of energy infrastructure more broadly. 56% say governments should be able to invest in or hold pipeline ownership stakes, against 21% who think that role belongs exclusively to the private sector. Backing runs highest in Atlantic Canada (66%), and Ontario (63%), and Manitoba is the only region where it dips below half, at 48%.
The shift is sharpest among past Conservative voters. In 2019, Angus Reid found 85% of past Conservative voters wanted government to step back and let markets drive the economy. That number has slipped to half today, a shift pollsters link in part to sovereignty concerns during US President Donald Trump’s second term.
Sponsored · Selkirk Copper Mines
Views on the original 2018 purchase have also warmed, even as the total cost swelled to more than $34 billion, roughly five times what was originally projected. 42% now call the purchase the right decision, up from 34% in February 2025, while 25% call it wrong, down from 32%. Quebec is the only region where more respondents call the purchase a mistake (36%) than a good call (32%).
Related: Toll Settlement Gives Trans Mountain Certainty, But Not A Clean Exit
Backing for keeping the pipeline itself peaks in Atlantic Canada (62%) and Ontario (61%). Quebec shows the widest split, with 44% wanting to keep the pipeline and just 26% ready to sell. Split by 2025 vote, 65% of past Liberal voters want to keep it, compared with half of past Conservative supporters.
Once Indigenous ownership is offered as a third option, federal ownership falls under 50% support for the first time in the survey. Ottawa retains the plurality at 41%, ahead of a private sale (23%) and an Indigenous ownership transfer (13%), with the remainder undecided.
The survey comes as Ottawa works with Alberta on a separate, new pipeline that would reuse much of the Trans Mountain corridor to move oil from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith unveiled that project in July as a public-private partnership involving Trans Mountain and Pembina Pipeline, building on a memorandum of understanding the two signed in November 2025.
Angus Reid polled 2,649 Canadian adults online between July 10 and 14, a sample size that carries a margin of error of about 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
