The trust we place in major institutions such as government, business and the media took a hit in the past year.
The global communications firm Edelman does an annual survey to test the trust levels the broad public holds in its institutions. It looks at four: government, media, business and NGOs. It then samples two groups: a smaller one made up of what they called informed participants. These tend to be wealthier, more educated and bigger consumers of news. The second group is a four times larger and more aligned with the broader public.
What they found in the 2020 Trust Barometer, business is the only institution that registered positively on the Competency scale. It vastly outpaced government – 64 to 10% – on its ability to get things done.
This might be surprising but it was also higher on the ethical scale than
either government or the media. NGOs scored best on ethics. Government scored
lowest on all counts followed by the media.
In Canada, our position fell three percentage points leaving us in the middle of the pack globally.
