By David Akin, Parliamentary Bureau ChiefOTTAWA – With the separatist Parti Quebecois leading the polls ahead of next month’s Quebec election, a new survey says one in four in the rest of Canada are fed up and ready to kick Quebec out of Confederation.
In fact, just a bare majority of English-speaking Canadians outside Quebec would vote to keep Quebec in Canada in the event of another referendum crisis, Abacus Data says in a new poll provided exclusively to QMI Agency.
And despite being divided over whether Quebec should stay in or get out, English-speaking Canadians outside of Quebec overwhelmingly agree that Quebec should not be given special treatment even if that increases the risk of separation.
That finding could be trouble for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives if the PQ’s Pauline Marois becomes premier and begins demanding more power and autonomy for her province.
“Canadians outside Quebec are likely to be opposed to any moves to placate Quebec,” said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data. “Intense Quebec/rest-of-Canada political conflict may once again be around the corner.”
In an online survey, Abacus asked 1,795 English-language speakers living outside of Quebec how they would vote if all Canadians could vote in a referendum on the future of Quebec in Confederation.
Just 52% said they’d vote to keep Quebec in Canada while 26% would vote to remove Quebec. A further 22% said they were unsure of how they’d vote.
Albertans and supporters of the Conservative Party were far more likely to vote to kick Quebec out. Ontarians and supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada were much more likely to want to keep Quebec in Canada.
Though nearly 60 NDP MPs are from Quebec, only 60% of those who voted New Democrat last year would vote to keep Quebec in Confederation compared to 70% of those who voted Liberal and 48% of those who voted Conservative.
Meanwhile, young Canadians between the ages of 18 and 20 were most likely to say they weren’t sure how they’d vote on Quebec’s future.
And yet, though the rest of Canada is split on the referendum question, nearly 90% of all respondents said the federal government should not bend over backward to keep Quebec in Confederation and only 12% agreed with the statement: “The federal government should do all it can to keep Quebec part of Canada, even if it requires special treatment.”
Opposition to that statement was near unanimous – 96% – among those who voted for a Conservative candidate in the last election.
Abacus drew the 1,795 survey participants from an online panel of more than 150,000 Canadians.
Abacus said it weighted the data for age, gender and other factors to mirror the latest Canadian census data. The pollster did not provide a margin of error for its results because panellists were not selected randomly. The margin of error for a randomly-selected panel of 1,795 is plus or minus 2.4%, 19 times out of 20.
Would you mind if Quebec separated from the rest of Canada?
Yes, they are a part of this country.
No, let them do what they want.
Unsure.
Divide deepens between Quebec and rest of Canada | BlogsCanada.ca
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