Poll: Canadians Sour On U.S.

The Toronto Star ^ | December 7, 2002 | Tim Harper

[quidnunc]

Majority thinks relations have deteriorated over past year

Ottawa – A majority of Canadians believe relations between Ottawa and Washington have deteriorated over the past year.

The Toronto Star/CBC/La Presse poll done by EKOS Research found 52 per cent of respondents agreed that Canada-U.S. relations are worse than they were a year ago, while 38 per cent felt they had stayed the same and only 7 per cent felt they had improved.

The poll was released as Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and Tom Ridge, head of the homeland security department in the U.S., met yesterday in Washington to discuss Canadian concerns about immigration controls south of the border, which Ottawa believes unfairly target some Canadian citizens.

Almost two-thirds of respondents, 65 per cent, also told EKOS they believed the U.S. had "no business" telling Canadians to increase defence spending or pushing Ottawa to back Washington's hawkish foreign policy, both of which are matters for Canadians to decide themselves. Thirty-one per cent said they felt it "reasonable" for Washington to request Canada's military support, backed by a more robust military.

They believe Canadian interests could be put at risk by ignoring the requests from Washington.

"There is a great deal of ambivalence and ambiguity in Canadians minds," EKOS President Frank Graves said. "It appears having something less than the most idyllic relations with the United States is not necessarily seen as a bad thing."

EKOS interviewed 1,205 Canadians 18 years and older between Monday and Wednesday this week and said the results are accurate within plus-or-minus 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Canadian views of U.S. President George W. Bush were distilled in a single question posed by EKOS, which asked whether Bush or Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed a bigger threat to world peace.

While 56 per cent of respondents said it was the Iraqi leader, 38 per cent said it was Bush.

Graves said the numbers did not necessarily indicate Canadians felt the U.S. president was "evil," but it was a perception that, as the leader of the world's only "hyper-power," the American leader has more firepower at his disposal than ever before.

"His missteps or miscalculations can have far more catastrophic calculations than nutty or evil Saddam Hussein," Graves said.

"A good portion of Canadians wouldn't agree with the characterization that he is a moron, but they do think he is dangerous."

-snip-

[desertcry]

I agree. BC is friendly to the USA, but eastern canadians regards BC as a tiny appendage, and don't count in canadian politics or policy. It's time for BC to stop those eastern elitist dead on their tracks.

[Light Speed]

Absolutely...out here in Redneck land[Alberta]....its lock and load!
Good to see the support numbers out west...except for Burning Man land..[BC].
CPR line should have stopped in the Okanogan.

[Squawk 8888]

That headline is a misleading piece of cr@p. The respondents aren't "sour on the US", they're (correctly) pointing out that relations have deteriorated. Had the pollsters asked them to elaborate they would have put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Libs.