Focus Canada 2010
Public opinion matters – in all countries, but especially in democracies like ours. Public opinion research in the public interest makes an essential contribution to good governance and meeting societal challenges.
Polls pollute our democracy? Nonsense.
A few pollsters caused a stir recently when they suggested political polls are polluting Canadian democracy. The ensuing debate, which has bizarrely pitted pro-polling pollsters against anti-polling pollster-pundits, has largely been a tempest in a teapot.
How conservative are Canadians?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his team have expressed the desire to move Canada in an incrementally more conservative direction through successive Conservative governments.
The Canadian conversation
Were you, like me, watching Quebec's election results pouring in last night, remembering Jacques Parizeau's denunciation of "the ethnic vote" in 1995 and anticipating that one of the defeated candidates might blame his ill-deserved fate on veiled Muslim voters - all 67 of them?
Quebec’s “winning conditions”
The members of the Parti Québécois have spoken, electing as their new leader a young, handsome, gay, and postcocaine André Boisclair, who has assured supporters a vote for him is a vote for a referendum " immédiatement" upon his moving across the aisle in the National Assembly.
Mr. Harper’s child-proof political strategy
Okay, Canada, Mother's Day Pop Quiz. Question: What policy idea is capable of uniting: (a) social conservatives, (b) advocates of smaller government, and (c) Quebec, the most socially progressive region in North America?
New Canadians, old values?
Who would have thought? The community responsible for Toronto's gay pride parade, reliably the opposite of dull, finds itself at the centre of a legislative debate that has become boring.
Sex and fire: Religion, homosexuality, and authority in Canada and the United States
Canada’s Supreme Court recently declared that, should the federal govern-ment wish to proceed with same-sex marriage legislation, it should be encumbered only by its own fear of controversy–not by any constitutional constraints.
Shooting the pollsters
It was bound to happen sooner or later. As Americans and their leaders prepare for the most important and divisive presidential election in decades, pollsters, who like to think of themselves as scientists outside the arena of political contention, have become targets of partisan venom from both the Kerry and Bush camps.