Canadians Becoming More Conservative?

Canadian values becoming more conservative: Poll

 

 

BY AMY MINSKY, POSTMEDIA NEWS JUNE 8, 2011 2:03 PM

 

 

 

Canadian ideals are shifting to the right, being taken over by a "unique strain of conservatism," former Reform party leader Preston Manning said

Photograph by: Aaron Lynett, National Post

OTTAWA — Canadian ideals are shifting to the right, being taken over by a "unique strain of conservatism," former Reform party leader Preston Manning said while discussing the results of a poll from his Calgary-based think-tank.

This was the second year the Manning Centre for Building Democracy conducted the poll, which asked Canadians about their attitudes toward values and policies generally ascribed to Conservatives. Last year's results indicated similar movements, with more people saying they don't want government peddling grand views and having its hands in all aspects of society.

The only exception to this opinion is public safety and security policies, Manning said in an interview Wednesday.

Of those surveyed, 65 per cent said government should focus on current issues, and 67 per cent said government should decrease in size in order to do more.

Canada, it seems, has arrived at a point where its citizens have shifted their expectations for government, said Allan Gregg, the chair of Harris Decima, which helped with the polling.

"(Government) is no longer the grand designer," Gregg said. "Now it's expected to manage problems as they arise."

But the national shift isn't necessarily being ascribed to Conservative leader Stephen Harper, who has been prime minister for slightly more than five years.

"This can't be traced back the last two or three or four years," said Andre Turcotte, president of Feedback Research Centre, which also helped with polling and interpreting the results. Instead, he said, this is something that has been happening since the late 1980s — around the same time the Reform Party began its rise.

In fact, Harper wasn't in line with the movement until 2008, when there was a "turning point," he said.

Turcotte couldn't speculate to whether it was by design or surprise, but he said that in 2008, Harper managed to tap into what many wanted out of government — being smaller and more focused on specific issues.

On the eve of the Conservative party's convention, Manning offered several warnings to today's politicians.

"As these conservative values become mainstream values, people will less and less identify them with Conservatives. People will just say these are Canadian values," he said, offering that the Conservatives will soon find it more difficult to distinguish themselves from other federal parties.

Finding ways to stand out among the parties won't be an easy task, Manning said, since the poll suggested a large portion of the country's electorate has become "seriously disengaged" from politics, and is moving toward a world of "self, family and friends."

"People are looking for a realignment of Canadian values," he said. "They don't believe in big government solutions to big problems."

Instead, the poll results suggest that Canadians are adopting a "unique conservatism" that combines free market principles while government takes smaller role in day-to-day life but keeps a close eye on safety and security.

The poll was conducted from May 4 to 11, almost immediately after the election that saw the New Democrats leapfrog over the Liberals, who tumbled from Official opposition to third party.

A total of 1,000 interviews were conducted with randomly selected Canadians, resulting in a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points within a 95 per cent confidence interval.

aminsky@postmedia.com

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