Support plummets for Afghan mission

Support plummets for Afghan mission

RICHARD BLACKWELL

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

An increasing proportion of Canadians disagree with Canada's decision to send troops to Afghanistan, and the opposition is growing fastest in Quebec.

According to a poll conducted this week among 1,000 adults across the country, there has been a sharp decline in support for military involvement in Afghanistan compared with two months earlier.

About 54 per cent of those polled oppose or strongly oppose Canadian involvement, compared with 41 per cent in mid-March. Negative sentiment has grown sharply in Quebec, where 70 per cent of respondents are against sending troops to Afghanistan, compared with 53 per cent two months ago.

The survey was conducted by the Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail on Wednesday and Thursday. The cross-country numbers have a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

While “Canadians have shown some ambivalence to this issue right from the start,” and were hesitant to support military involvement in Afghanistan, the emotional intensity of the opposition appears to have increased, said Strategic Counsel chairman Allan Gregg.

That's partly because of the number of troops killed in the conflict, and the debates about flying flags at half-mast and the role of the media in covering military funerals, he said.

“Active military combat is just not consistent with Canadians' self-image of what we should be doing abroad,” Mr. Gregg said yesterday. “For good or ill, we continue to see ourselves as kind of the Baden-Powell of the world community, doing good deeds, not getting killed or killing others.” (The late British lieutenant-general Robert Baden-Powell, although a military hero, is best known as the founder of Scouting.)

Still, there is continuing support for the mission among the Tories' key supporters: men, people between 35 and 49, and individuals with income of more than $100,000 a year.

Only about 38 per cent of Conservative voters oppose sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan — but this number, too, has grown, from 24 per cent in March.

“While things are clearly not moving in the right direction for them, it's far from a disaster,” Mr. Gregg said.

The most pressing issue for the Conservatives is the low level of support in Quebec for the Canadian presence in Afghanistan.

That could give the Liberals a wedge issue they can try to use to hammer the Tories in the province, Mr. Gregg said.

Ironically, however, the Harper government is — at least for the moment —enjoying fairly strong overall support in Quebec.

About 30 per cent of those polled in the province said they would vote for a Conservative candidate if the election were held now, up from 25 per cent who actually voted for one in the January election.

“Somehow, either through good luck or good management or voter ignorance, the Conservatives have been able to disassociate their decision in Afghanistan from their overall performance in the province of Quebec,” Mr. Gregg said.

In the rest of the country, about 36 per cent of respondents said they would vote for the Tories, down about four percentage points from the actual results of the Jan. 23 election.

The Strategic Counsel poll also asked about reactions to the new government's first budget, released on Tuesday.

About 56 per cent of Canadians said it was “good” or “very good” for the average person, with the strongest support in Quebec, where 69 per cent gave it one of those two ratings.

Ontarians were more lukewarm, with 48 per cent in those categories.

However, countrywide, almost two-thirds of those polled were a bit cynical about the government's motives, answering that the Tories were thinking more about winning a majority in the next election, rather than designing a budget that was in the long-term interests of Canadians.

Mr. Gregg rates the Conservatives' overall polling numbers as “a solid gentleman's B.”