A majority of Canadians believe rail blockades in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs are either “unacceptable” or “somewhat unacceptable” demonstrations, according to latest survey results.
According to the survey from Nanos Research, released Sunday night, 73 per cent of Canadians believe rail blockades are at least a “somewhat unacceptable” way of showing support for the hereditary chiefs, while 55 per cent believe the federal government waited too long to remove the blockades.
In February, rail blockades sprung up across the country in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oppose the Coastal GasLink pipeline being built on their traditional territory in northern British Columbia.
According to the survey, 50 per cent of Canadians believe the government should have allowed Coastal GasLink to proceed with the pipeline despite the opposition from the hereditary chiefs, while 39 per cent believe the government should’ve halted construction to restart negotiations.
On March 1, the hereditary chiefs reached a tentative agreement with federal and provincial cabinet ministers regarding land and title rights.
Before any meeting between members could be facilitated, the hereditary chiefs demanded that members of the RCMP back off their territory.
The Nanos survey found that 53 per cent of Canadians at least “somewhat support” having the RCMP withdraw from Indigenous lands and instead allow for Indigenous policing to be the primary police force on their territory. Residents of Ontario were most likely to support this at 58 per cent, while people in the Prairies were least likely at 43 per cent.
When it comes to the Trudeau government’s job at handling reconciliation as a whole, 38 per cent of Canadians believe the government has done at least a poor job of advancing reconciliation since they were brought into power in 2015. Another 33 per cent of Canadians believe the government has done an average job.
More than 50 per cent are at least somewhat pessimistic when it comes to achieving meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada.
METHODOLOGY
Nanos conducted an RDD dual frame (land- and cell-lines) hybrid telephone and online random survey of 1,008 Canadians, 18 years of age or older, between February 29th to March 3rd, 2020 as part of an omnibus survey. Participants were randomly recruited by telephone using live agents and administered a survey online. The sample included both land- and cell-lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted by age and gender using the latest Census information and the sample is geographically stratified to be representative of Canada.
This study was commissioned by CTV News and the research was conducted by Nanos Research.
