Overwhelming support among Iranian Canadians for regime change, community survey finds

A woman burns an image of then Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei during a protest against the Iranian regime outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, Jan. 13, 2026. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

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Nine in ten Iranian Canadians “strongly or somewhat support regime change in Iran,” according to a new community survey.

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The survey was conducted by the Metropolis Institute (a division of the Association for Canadian Studies) on behalf of the non-profit Advancement of Human Rights Organization for the Middle East (AHROME). Metropolis Institute distributed 1,768 surveys between March 29 and April 13, most of them at large Iranian community gatherings in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, and 1,166 were fully completed.

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Kevin Rod, president of AHROME, told National Post the findings were to be expected.

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“Knowing our diaspora community, I was not surprised by any of the responses,” Rod, a practising physician and member of the Iranian Canadian community, said in a written statement.

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The figures were even higher when it came to levels of “very unfavourable opinion of the current Iranian government” (92.3 per cent), and reached near-unanimous levels among respondents agreeing that the “regime mostly does not or does not represent the will of the Iranian people” (98.4 per cent) and those expressing a desire for “at least normal diplomatic relations with Israel in the future” (95.9 per cent).

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The survey found similarly high levels of support for the joint Israeli-American military campaign against Iran, which began in late February. An overwhelming majority (90.2 per cent) of Iranian Canadians “strongly or somewhat approve of international military actions against the Iranian government,” and a similar number (89.4 per cent) believe “such actions contribute at least somewhat to political change in Iran.”

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Rod called on the Canadian government to listen to the voices of Iranian Canadians when deciding how the country responds to the ongoing conflict. “Given the large Iranian diaspora in Canada and Canada’s history of supporting human rights around the world, the Canadian government is well placed to lead the way in raising awareness and supporting the people of Iran (in) their struggle to change this regime,” Rod said.

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According to a Statistics Canada census from 2021, there are roughly 200,000 Iranian Canadians in the country and another 80,000 who identify as “Persian,” the largest ethnic group in Iran.

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Most of the community survey respondents said they are “very or somewhat attached to Canada” and 84.2 per cent said “yes or probably” to having a “long-term future in Canada.”

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The majority of Iranian Canadians arrived following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the overthrow of the monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the rise of Islamic cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. Before 1980, Statistics Canada data shows just over 2,000 people born in Iran had immigrated to Canada.