NO OPINION LIKE AN UNFORMED OPINION IN THIS DEBATE.

“There’s no doubt that the level of awareness, in terms of the actual nuts and bolts of supply management, is fairly low,” said Shachi Kurl, the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. “If you’re a proponent of scrapping supply management, maybe that works for you, or if you’re an opponent maybe that works for you. There’s no opinion like an unformed opinion in this debate.”

But she said the deeper results in the poll show people are “a little bit all over the map on this issue.” The poll used an online survey of members of the Angus Reid Forum, and was self-commissioned by the institute.

Once the arguments for and against supply management were laid out, roughly a third people said they’re OK with paying higher prices for supply-managed products, with slightly higher numbers for milk and cheese than for eggs and chicken breasts. Overall, once it was fully explained, the proportions of people who supported, opposed or remained unsure about supply management were nearly even at one-third apiece.

Should supply management be ended, 41 per cent of respondents said they’d support a transition fund for affected farmers (the question proposed a fund of $4 billion).

As for NAFTA, when the U.S. government released its negotiation priorities in July, they didn’t specifically mention supply management — but it’s a safe bet it will come up. U.S. President Donald Trump has previously singled out Canada’s dairy farmers as a threat to Wisconsin’s.

The poll showed just 29 per cent of respondents felt Canada should “stand firm on supply management, even if it means the United States may retaliate.”

“There is a willingness, a very clear willingness, to see supply management get scrapped ... it’s certainly something people in this country say, if push came to shove, we might be prepared to let it go,” Kurl said.

“But that’s not the view of everyone.”