Here’s how Canadians feel about cities clearing out homeless encampments, according to a Nanos poll

Cities across Canada are declaring housing emergencies to remove homeless encampments, but the move is drawing pushback from some Canadians.

Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support municipalities declaring states of emergencies in order to clear out homeless encampments in parks and public spaces, a new Nanos poll done for CTV News found.

The survey found 32 per cent of Canadians support the use of the emergency powers, while 25 per cent somewhat support it.

Nineteen per cent oppose communities declaring states of emergencies to tear down homeless encampments, while 18 per cent somewhat oppose it. Six per cent were unsure, the poll said.

B.C. saw the highest number of people supporting the idea at 68 per cent, while only 28 per cent were against it.

Quebec saw the lowest amount of support, with less than half in favour of using a state of emergency to clear homeless encampments. Meanwhile, over forty per cent were opposed or somewhat opposed to it.

The survey conducted between Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 polled 1,052 people in total.

Solution is affordable homes, but they can’t be built fast enough

Advocates for the unhoused population say clearing homeless encampments is a temporary solution, because they usually pop back up elsewhere soon after.

“Edmonton – where I live, is the case that proves that this is not in any way a solution,” Jim Gurnett from the Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homeless told CTV News Saturday.

“For a couple of years from 2022 to 2024, Edmonton had by far the most aggressive approach to treating down camps, everywhere, over and over again,” Gurnett said. “And now, at the other side of that process (after) over three years, we have 5,000 people everyday that are homeless in this city. More people than we had before, so clearly the camps are not the problem, there’s something else that’s the problem.”

Gurnett said the solution is more affordable housing and creating more programs to support community mental health, since shelters have been notoriously violent and overcrowded.

“We’re in a project where we’re hoping to see a number of housing units built,” Keith Hamble, CEO of Fred Victor, a social service charitable organization said. “It’s going to take five years from the ground up to actually build those.”

“In the meantime, there are more immediate solutions around supplement programs, moving people into more unique shelters, and also into housing that can have some sort of service level attached to it.”

Methodology: Nanos Research, RDD dual-frame hybrid telephone and online random survey, Sept. 29 to Oct. 1, 2025, n=1052, accurate ±3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.