Transcript: Eddie Sheppard

An interview with the executive vice president at Abacus Data

In recent years, the world has become an increasingly unstable place. My guest on the program this week says that Canadians have adopted a “precarity mindset.” Now, roughly nine out of ten Canadians believe that this uncertainty is here to stay — that it is, in fact, the new normal.

Eddie Sheppard is executive vice president at Abacus Data. His analysis for Abacus is From Crisis to Condition: The Psychology of Canadian Uncertainty.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview here.

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TH: I think you have a unique perspective on what is going on in this country right now. You’re the executive vice president at Abacus, but also you have a PhD in psychology — so you have this public opinion and data perspective and then the psychology perspective. You’ve just published a new analysis. In Canada, we’re in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, an immigration crisis, an opioid crisis, and then of course a cross-border crisis, including tensions with the United States. Over this past year, you’ve been looking a lot, and thinking a lot, about what this sustained uncertainty does to us. You’ve coined a term, “the precarity mindset.” Talk to us about what that is, and what signals you’re looking for.

ES: We saw it start to take form early last year, and it looked like it may have been a little bit of a shift in the data. But over the course of the year, we saw it build, and its momentum grew quite strong. What looked like an initial small signal in the data has now turned into a mindset that Canadians are experiencing. It moved from what we had called “the scarcity mindset,” which is this feeling that there isn’t enough to go around and that resources are scarce. There wasn’t enough housing or doctors or jobs for everyone to have access to. It made people feel as though for them to win, someone else had to lose.

Now, precarity is when you’re not sure if what you have will hold, whether that be your personal savings or possessions or the institutions we rely on. There’s that concern that the rug can be pulled out from us at any point in time. We really saw this take shape when Donald Trump re-emerged last January and the threats around the 51st state and our sovereignty and the tariffs. The ongoing uncertainty, and the concern he created, made Canadians realize that the world can change at any point in time — and not always in our favour. That uncertainty changes how people move through the world.

TH: One of the data points here is that nearly nine in 10 people that you have surveyed believe that this uncertainty is here to stay, that this is the new normal. What does that mean for this pattern?

ES: Yeah, I think what’s interesting is that for years we’ve talked about crisis. As you noted, the financial crisis, the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the pandemic. Crisis implies, to some degree, something temporary, something that we can exit and something that we can endure. Now, a few years ago, a term was coined called “the permacrisis,” this notion that we are going through this extended period of uncertainty and instability. So, it [begs the] question: What if we can’t actually exit this crisis? What if it is a series of crises, otherwise known as a condition?

In our latest research, we found that nine in 10 Canadians, as you said, think that this sense of uncertainty is now the new normal, not just a rough patch but something that we’re waiting to get past, something that is the new baseline for how we interpret the world around us. Psychologically, that’s a pretty big shift. When people see something moving from event to condition, it becomes integrated into how we interpret reality, how we spend, how we vote, how we plan our lives. People are starting to organize their lives around this. People are delaying significant milestones because they’re not certain of what their future will hold for them.

TH: I do want to dig into some of those specifics in a moment. But first, one of the fascinating things in this report is that you’ve quantified something that I think some of us journalists have been noticing for a while — which is that this uncertainty fuels different reactions in different parts of the populace, and it in fact sharpens partisanship. Walk us through what that looks like in your data, in terms of how we evaluate and respond to risk in this country right now.

ES: Yeah. So, you look at [the question], “What are the major threats facing Canada in the years to come?” Really, two emerge. The number one that we saw in the data was the unpredictability caused by Donald Trump and his administration. The second one was more internal-facing — our own political and economic challenges. Really different sources of threat, one being external and more global, one being internal and more focused on our own economy and domestic challenges. I think it’s different threats with the same posture, and that posture is a sense of vigilance. When you have this uncertainty mindset and the precarity mindset, it creates this sense of vigilance. You’re scanning, you’re looking for threats, you’re looking for potential causes of harm. Your brain is in a state of heightened stress, to a degree, and it causes you to look for things that are causing that to happen.

Politically, the interesting finding is the split. If you are a Liberal supporter, you’re more likely to perceive Donald Trump as being the greatest threat facing Canada. If you’re a Conservative supporter, you’re likely to perceive domestic challenges as being the biggest threat. It’s that distinction between the political parties, but the end result is still that concern about threats and instability and uncertainty.

Once you lose personal felt control, you want to find a way to regain that. So, we look to who can achieve that for us. And it doesn’t really just stop at that. Four in five Canadians think that this ongoing global conflict can directly impact Canada. Distant events are now starting to feel more immediate to us. It feels closer to our lives and to our homes, and that really shrinks our felt sense of control.

TH: I’m curious about the age split on this. What have you found when you parse this for age and for generation?

ES: It’s actually quite consistent, the main difference being that older generations are a little more concerned and a little less optimistic. I think part of that is when they look at the lives and the stability they have built, when they’re nearing retirement or looking to downsize their home or move somewhere else to live out their retirement years, they’re worried that everything they have built can be lost. I think we see that sense of pessimism a little more strongly in the older generation, simply due to the fact that — to be blunt — they don’t have as much time to regain what they might lose. Whereas younger Canadians still have that sense of optimism and can see they have a longer runway to try and regain some of this.

Now, at the same time, those are individuals who are more likely to delay major life events. Young Canadians are the ones who are delaying starting a family, having children, pursuing post-secondary education, buying a home. They’re putting off all these major milestones that you grow up your whole life thinking that’s what I have to do to be successful. Now people are putting those on pause, because they don’t have the felt security and stability to pursue those in a way that they’ll feel successful.

Older Canadians are worried about losing what they have. Younger Canadians are worried about not achieving what they want to have, which I think is a really interesting split.

TH: I just want to read a quote from your report: “When the broader environment feels unstable, people instinctively pull inward. They tighten spending, monitor information more closely and concentrate on the parts of life they can influence. It’s a quiet recalibration of behaviour. Not fear-driven, but control-seeking, not panic, but precaution.” So, this is back to your agency point. When we’re feeling so uncertain, we try to hold on to things that we can control in some way. But what I don’t understand about that is we don’t have control over Donald Trump. We don’t have control over geopolitics. And frankly — this is a terrible thing for me as a journalist to say — the public does not have control over the news either. Is there a contradiction in that?