Canadians’ world view not so rosy

Poll finds less than half have ‘open’ sentiment

OTTAWA• Canada’ s reputation as a nation with an open and optimistic world view that flies in the face of rising pessimism and nationalism elsewhere is being challenged by research suggesting many Canadians hold views in line with some of those darker forces.

Fewer than half of Canadians appear on the “open” side of an index devised by EKOS Research and The Canadian Press to gauge populist sentiment here, and the remainder either have a closed- off view of the world or are on the fence.

The research aggregated polls involving 12,604 people to explore to what extent Canadians’ views are in line with voters who backed Donald Trump’s campaign for U.S. president and the exit of Britain from the European Union.

Both were understood to be the results of rising discontent among those sideswiped by technological, cultural and economic transformation and seeking to regain some measure of control by eschewing the political status quo.

Whether Canada could be facing a similar issue has been a question ever since.

The results of the study suggest 46 per cent of Canadians are open- minded toward the world and each other, with the highest numbers found in B.C. and the Atlantic provinces. But 30 per cent report feeling economically and culturally insecure, a sentiment found in the largest numbers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

EKOS and CP aggregated two telephone polls between June and December about people’s perceptions of their economic outlook, class mobility, ethnic fluency and tolerance. Pollsters also asked whether they believed such movements were good or not.

The results were in turn plotted on a spectrum from “open” to “ordered” — a new way of classifying viewpoints that goes beyond the traditional right-versus-left.

The old partisan markers are less a part of today’s political debate than broader opinions about how the world should be run, said EKOS president Frank Graves. “The left- right has mutated under these pressures into this ‘ordered-open’ and it brings along some of the traditional left-right, but it brings along a lot of new divisions,” Graves said.

“The questions now are: Do you want to pull up the drawbridge? What do you think about people who don’t have the same skin colour as you? What do you think about the importance of tolerating dissent or having a more-ordered versus a morechaotic or creative society?”

The telephone polls had a margin of error of 0.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

❚ OPEN: The Atlantic region The research reveals the complex nature of what EKOS has called “northern populism.”

For example, 50 per cent of those surveyed in the Atlantic region hold an “open” view. That means they feel positive about their economic future and class mobility and have a perception of the ethnic makeup of the country that most closely mirrors reality. They’re also the least likely to view populism as a positive force.

Yet, in the Atlantic, the population is older, less diverse and somewhat less educated, factors understood to underpin a more closed-minded view.

❚ ORDERED: Oshawa, Ont. The economy of Oshawa is growing, median income levels are high and so are the numbers of people with post-secondary degrees. Yet, 38 per cent of those polled in that city skewed toward a more ordered view. No city had more people on that side of the spectrum.

“Where you l i ve is i nstructive, and the collective economic experiences and the demographic is also important. But they are by no means deterministic,” Graves said.

“Canadian populism shares more with southern American populism than people think, but there are some important and distinct differences,” Graves said.

“One of the most important is that populism in Canada is not rooted in just the white population; in fact there isn’t any significant difference across white and non- white portions of the population in Canada.”