Canadians' national pride rising: poll by Tony Atherton
Source : Ottawa Citizen
Sense of nationalism 33 % stronger than in 1993, survey finds
Aug 30, 2002by Tony Atherton
Canadians are feeling bullish about their country's culture and identity and about some of the institutions that support them, according to a poll commissioned by a nationalist lobby group.
An Ipsos-Reid survey of 1100 adult Canadians conducted earlier this month for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting suggests the percentage of Canadians with a strong or very strong sense of national identity and culture has gone up by a third, from 29 per cent to 39 per cent, since a similar poll was conducted in 1993.
At the same time, the fraction of Canadians with a weak sense of identity has dropped by half, from 32 per cent to 16 per cent.
Ipsos-Reid says the poll results can be considered accurate to within three percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.
The poll also indicates that far more Canadians (43 per cent) believe Canada's culture has become more distinct from that of the U.S over the last five years, than believe our cultural distinction has weakened during the period (26 per cent).
When it comes to defining the key agents of our cultural distinction, the CBC topped a list of institutions supplied by pollsters.
Some 76 per cent of respondents indicated a high degree of confidence in the CBC's ability to protect Canadian culture and identity, That compares to 44 per cent for the federal government and 32 and 30 per cent respectively for cable and satellite companies.
CTV recorded the second highest degree of confidence at 68 per cent, while Global TV's result fell below that of specialty channels with a confidence rating of 58 per cent.
While support for the CBC as an institution seems to be growing, according to the poll (the percentage of Canadians who think the CBC is doing a good to excellent job meeting its mandate rose from 78 per cent in 1995 to 81 per cent in 2002), the majority of those polled felt the CBC could be stronger.
Eight-eight per cent of respondents agreed to some degree that they would like to see the CBC strengthened within their region of the country. And 83 per cent of those polled agreed to some degree with the following statement: "We should build a new CBC capable of providing high quality Canadian programming with strong regional content throughout Canada."
