Canadians Shrug Off Trade War as Growth and Energy Worries Ease

The Nanos Consumer Confidence Index climbed to 52.1 in late June, up from 48.3 in March, a shift that breaks the pattern of declining sentiment that dominated the first quarter of 2026. The uptick happened even as trade friction with the United States intensified, with tariffs on steel, aluminum, and softwood lumber all expanding in scope between April and June.

What changed was not the trade picture. What changed were expectations around two domestic factors that had been weighing on households more directly: GDP growth projections and energy costs.

The growth revision that mattered

Statistics Canada revised its Q1 GDP estimate upward in May, moving the annualized growth rate from 1.2% to 1.8%. The revision was driven largely by stronger-than-reported consumer spending and a surge in non-residential construction that had been underestimated in preliminary data. By itself, a 0.6 percentage point adjustment is technical. But it landed at a moment when recession talk had been amplifying in financial media for months, and the revised figure moved the narrative from "borderline contraction" to "modest but positive momentum."

The Nanos polling, conducted between June 18 and June 25, showed the share of Canadians rating the economy as "strong" or "somewhat strong" rose to 31%, up from 24% in March. The largest move was in Ontario and Alberta, where consumer confidence had cratered hardest during the winter. In Alberta specifically, the index rose 6.8 points, the steepest provincial gain.

Energy prices stopped climbing

The second driver was energy. Crude prices, which had climbed steadily from January through mid-April on supply concerns tied to OPEC production cuts and refinery disruptions in Texas, plateaued in May and declined slightly in June. WTI settled at $78.40 per barrel at the end of June, down from a peak of $87.20 in mid-April.

Gasoline prices at the pump in Canada followed with a lag. The average price per litre dropped from $1.62 in late April to $1.51 by late June, a decline that showed up in household budgets quickly. For a two-vehicle household driving 25,000 kilometres per year combined, that translated to roughly $110 per month in savings at the pump, a figure large enough to register as discretionary breathing room for middle-income earners.

The poll captured this directly. The share of respondents who said their personal finances were "better" or "somewhat better" than a year ago rose to 22%, the highest reading since October 2025. The question about job security also improved, with 67% of employed Canadians rating their job prospects as "good" or "very good," up from 61% in March.

Trade noise stayed noise

The trade war itself did not disappear from the news. Retaliatory tariffs on Canadian dairy and poultry exports were announced in early June, and premiers from Ontario and Quebec held a joint press conference warning of job losses in manufacturing. But the polling suggests those warnings did not override the more immediate signals households were receiving: gas was cheaper, wage growth was holding at 3.1% year-over-year, and the revised GDP numbers suggested the economy was not, in fact, tipping into recession.

Sentiment is not a forecast. But it shapes spending decisions in the near term, and those decisions feed back into the growth figures that shaped the sentiment in the first place. The June numbers suggest Canadians stopped bracing for contraction and started treating stability as the baseline again.