About this initiative
Foreign Policy by Canadians is a national deliberative polling initiative convened by Global Canada with the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab. In spring 2026, a representative sample of Canadians took part in a national deliberation on Canada’s place in the world — trade, security, immigration, and global cooperation — building on Canada’s first national deliberative poll, held in 2021.
What is a Deliberative Poll?
A Deliberative Poll® starts with a representative sample of the public, surveys them, then invites them to spend time learning about an issue, weighing trade-offs, and discussing it in moderated small groups with access to balanced briefing materials and experts. Everyone is surveyed again at the end. Because the same people answer the same questions before and after, the change measures what the public thinks once it has had the time, information, and space to think together.
The method was developed by Professor James Fishkin and is run here by the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab, which has conducted Deliberative Polls in dozens of countries.
The partnership
Global Canada
A non-partisan, not-for-profit organization committed to enhancing Canada’s positive global impact. Foreign Policy by Canadians is one of its key initiatives.
About Global Canada →Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab
The Stanford lab designs and runs the deliberation, administers the surveys, and holds the underlying research data under Stanford’s research ethics framework.
Visit the Stanford lab →Two national deliberations
Canada’s first national deliberative poll
A representative group of Canadians came together online to deliberate on the country’s foreign policy, led by the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab.
Browse the 2021 archive →The 2026 initiative
7,491 Canadians took the national baseline survey and 408 took part in weekend deliberations, with a control group of 425 to isolate the effect of deliberating.
Explore the 2026 initiative →Questions about the initiative?
Reach us at contact@global-canada.org — including researchers interested in access to the underlying deliberation data, whom we will connect with the Stanford team.