A recent poll has found that Canadians believe outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s greatest accomplishment in office was cannabis reform. With Prime Minister Trudeau getting ready to leave office, Canadians are looking back on his tenure and reviewing his performance.
For many, the role Trudeau played in legalizing marijuana in Canada was the highlight of his administration. Angus Reid Institute surveyed Canadian adults and found that marijuana reform was the outgoing Prime Minister’s most popular policy achievement with 52% of Canadians backing the prime minister’s cannabis-related policy efforts.
The non-profit held interviews with 1,850 adults from March 4th to 6th. In addition to cannabis reform, 47% of the polled Canadians gave Prime Minister Trudeau credit for how he handled the Coronavirus pandemic, 46% were supportive of his efforts to expand social services, 45% believed his handling of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war was effective, and just 39% supported his assault-style firearm ban.
Cannabis reform ultimately proved to be Trudeau’s most popular policy achievement, the poll found. Compared to the 52% that supported cannabis reform efforts, 38% of the surveyed Canadians supported his efforts to push gender equality, 19% supported the federal carbon tax, 17% supported completing an oil pipeline, 14% believed Trudeau’s response to inflation was appropriate, and 10% believed he had dealt with immigration policy correctly.
Canada was the second country to legalize cannabis after Uruguay, and it legalized the controversial drug in 2018. Both recreational and medical marijuana are legal for eligible adults with nearly 250,000 Canadians registering as medical marijuana patients as of March 2022. Overall, the Canadian cannabis industry was valued at $3.10 billion in 2023 and is predicted to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.1% from 2024 to 2030.
Prime Minister Trudeau was a vocal supporter of the country’s efforts to legalize recreational cannabis and even campaigned on cannabis reform. Although Canada’s adult-use cannabis program launched with various issues, several surveys and studies indicate that the program has been largely successful at achieving the goals it was launched to serve, such as providing a regulated and safe alternative to black market cannabis without increasing youth consumption.
A government report published in December 2024 revealed that most Canadian adults report purchasing their cannabis from legal sources compared to just 3% who said they use illicit sources to obtain cannabis. A separate 2025 report found that legalizing cannabis contributed to declining beer sales and suggested that some Canadian consumers may be shifting from alcohol to cannabis.
As Canadian marijuana brands like SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDL) continue to thrive in Canada, the industry will remember Trudeau as the Prime Minister who spearheaded the legalization of the industry and paved the way for these entities to sprout and blossom.
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