It’s not every day that a room full of seed growers and industry insiders gets a crash course in the national psyche. But that’s exactly what Dr. David Coletto delivered when he took the stage as keynote speaker today at the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA) meeting in Victoria, B.C. — equal parts pollster, futurist, and therapist for a country on edge.
Coletto, founder and CEO of Abacus Data and one of Canada’s most trusted public opinion analysts, didn’t come with easy answers. Instead, he offered something far more urgent: a wake-up call for anyone who wants to understand what Canadians are really thinking right now — and why it matters more than ever.
“We’ve shifted,” Coletto told the audience. “Not just in how we vote, or how we consume — but in how we feel. For years, Canadians lived with a sense of scarcity. Now we’ve moved into something deeper, more corrosive: a mindset of precarity.”
Scarcity vs. Precarity
Scarcity, he explained, is the fear of not having enough. Precarity is the fear that nothing will hold — not the food system, not the job market, not the political structure. And this shift, he argues, is now the dominant force shaping Canadian life.
Polling thousands of Canadians every week, Coletto has a front-row seat to the country’s mood swings. His data shows an unmistakable anxiety spike beginning late last year and accelerating in early 2025 — a cocktail of housing unaffordability, rising food prices, and the unnerving return of Donald Trump to the White House. That last piece? “Almost 80% of Canadians say Trump’s re-election is causing them stress,” Coletto said. “That’s a staggering number.”
Canadians, it turns out, aren’t just feeling pinched — they’re feeling untethered.
A New Political Psychology
For political parties, precarity changes everything. Coletto described how Pierre Poilievre’s message of rage and disruption worked well during the scarcity era — but lost its grip as Canadians began craving something more grounding.
Enter Mark Carney.
A decade ago, Carney might have been dismissed as the ultimate out-of-touch elite. But in 2025, as the nation spiraled into precarity, voters turned to him precisely because of his establishment credentials. “Canadians wanted the guy with the Oxford PhD. The central banker. The boring technocrat,” Coletto said. “They wanted someone who could say, ‘I’ve got this.’”
And they got him. In what Coletto called “the most dramatic mood swing in Canadian political history,” Carney’s Liberals surged to victory largely on the back of older voters, men over 60, and those terrified of the Trump trade war. Carney didn’t just replace Trudeau — he erased him. “It was like a Men in Black memory wipe,” Coletto joked, showing a chart of plummeting Liberal disapproval ratings immediately after Carney’s swearing-in.
What it Means for Seed Gurus — and Everyone Else
But Coletto wasn’t there to deliver a political postmortem. He was there to challenge the room — mostly farmers and ag stakeholders — to understand their role in this new reality.
“You are one of the last institutions Canadians still trust,” he said bluntly. “They think you care. They think you’re honest. And they think you’re being squeezed by the same systems that squeeze them — banks, grocery giants, telecoms.”
That trust, Coletto emphasized, is powerful currency. And in an age when Canadians are delaying life milestones, reevaluating careers, and questioning the very systems they once took for granted, agriculture has a unique opportunity to lead — not just as an industry, but as a stabilizing force in society.
“We need institutions that can offer people a sense of certainty,” he said. “And the food system — your system — can be one of them. But only if you keep telling your story.”
Coletto’s closing message was both cautionary and catalytic: this is not a passing storm. From climate change to AI disruption, the forces fueling precarity aren’t going anywhere. If anything, they’re just getting started.
But in this swirling uncertainty, there’s also opportunity — especially for industries rooted in something real. “People still believe in farmers,” he said. “They still believe in food. They still believe in land. That’s your edge.”
