About two-thirds of Canadians are confident that Canada is not a racist country, although the responses vary significantly between people of different age and partisan affiliation, according to a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute.
Young women are far more likely to agree that Canada is a racist country, with 54 percent of women aged 18 to 34 agreeing. Older men and women are the least likely to say they live in a racist country, with only 21 percent of men aged 55 and older agreeing with that statement.
Some of the starkest differences in opinion appear along partisan lines.
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Majorities in the both the Green Party and NDP believe Canada is a racist country, with 55 and 54 percent agreeing with that statement, respectively. Only 18 percent of Conservative voters believe Canada is a racist country, while 38 percent of Liberal voters agree.
The divide on the issue was clear in dueling news conferences in Ottawa this week.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh warned against ignoring “the bad parts of our history,” while Conservative leader Erin O’Toole decried activists who are “always seeing the bad and never the good” in Canada.
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said he had mixed feelings about Canada Day, which he said is a good time to reflect on “what we are as a country,” according to the Canadian Press. Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said she would be taking the opportunity to wear an orange shirt on Canada Day as symbol of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government will be two years old in the fall, which is about the usual expiry date for a minority Parliament, leading to speculation about an approaching election. The shocking discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops Residential School last month and the likelihood of many more such discoveries, such as the remains of 751 children discovered Wednesday at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School, means these issues could be at the forefront of an election campaign.
In his speech to the Conservative caucus on Wednesday, O’Toole looked to position himself right in the middle of mainstream Canadian opinion, expressing horror at elements of the country’s past while making the case for an optimistic view of the future.
More than half of Bloc Quebecois voters said they felt cold toward Muslims.
“I’m concerned that injustices in our past, or in our present, are too often seized upon by a small group of activist voices who use it to attack the very idea of Canada itself,” said O’Toole.
The Angus Reid Institute poll shows that the percentage of Canadians who think diversity makes the country better is growing in lockstep with the size of Canada’s visible minority population.
In 1994, when less than 10 percent of Canadians were visible minorities, about 82 per cent of the country said diversity was a positive thing. Now, with about a quarter of the country identifying as a visible minority, 86 percent of Canadians say diversity makes the country a better place.
Many of the divides on these issues fall along geographical and partisan lines. For example, just 17 percent of people in British Columbia said they felt “cold” or “more cold than warm” towards Muslims in Canada. That number rises to 27 percent in Alberta, but it balloons to 37 percent in Quebec. In fact, more than half of Bloc Quebecois voters said they felt cold toward Muslims, which is 13 points higher than the Conservative Party, at 38 percent.
The Angus Reid Institute poll also found some variance on how Canadians view so-called “micro-aggressions.”
About 26 percent of Canadians consider it either racist or offensive to ask a non-white person where they were born. Forty percent of Canadians say it depends on the circumstances and 25 percent say there is nothing wrong with saying that.
Forty-one percent of Canadians say it is either racist or offensive to say “you speak good English” to someone with an accent, while 35 percent say it depends on the context and 23 percent say there is nothing wrong with saying that.
Canadians are far less accepting of imitating someone of a different ethnicity, with 70 percent saying it is racist or offensive, 24 percent saying it depends on circumstances and six percent saying there’s nothing wrong with it. According to the poll, Indigenous people are less likely to be offended by this, with 61 percent saying it’s either racist or offensive.
In general, women are more likely to find these things offensive compared to men. Eighty-one percent of women aged 18 to 34 say that imitating someone of a different ethnicity is racist or offensive compared to just 62 percent of men aged 18 to 34, who are the least likely to be offended.
