OTTAWA, ON (February 15, 2024): In a new report, The politics of the culture wars in contemporary Canada, senior fellow Eric Kaufmann uses a nationally representative survey to examine public opinion on how Canadians respond to culture war issues, including: cancel culture, critical race theory, and transgender policy.
Media coverage of these issues has exploded since 2015 and you might be tempted to believe that the entire country has gone ‘woke’ or ‘cultural socialist’ – but you’d be wrong.
Canadian attitudes to the kinds of contentious issues that feature in such stories lean about 2 to 1 against the cultural socialist position.
The report indicates there is significant space for right-of-centre parties to increase the prominence of culture wars issues, and an associated electoral risk that left-of-centre parties must manage.
Key findings:
- Canadians oppose gender reassignment surgery for under-16s by 4 to 1;
- Respondents, by a 2 to 1 ratio, do not want transgender women to enter women’s sports competitions;
- More Canadians disapprove than approve of people displaying preferred pronouns;
- Canadians oppose removing statues of Sir John A. Macdonald by a 2 to 1 ratio;
- By a 78 to 22 margin, Canadians agree that “political correctness has gone too far”;
- By a 70 to 30 margin, Canadians oppose the idea that Canada is a racist country and a similar share do not want this taught at school;.
- By 70 to 30, people prefer a colour blind rather than colour-conscious approach to issues in society.
- Canadians oppose the idea of separating students in schools by race into privileged and oppressed by 92 to 8;
- Canadians are less likely to call their country racist than are Americans or Britons;
- 60 percent of Canadians believe that “215 indigenous residential school children were buried in a mass grave on school grounds in Kamloops, BC,” with just 15 percent disagreeing;
- 39 percent of Canadians and 55 percent of Americans believe that “Native peoples lived in peace and harmony prior to European settlement” of their countries;
- Canadian opinion on cancel culture, critical race/history, and transgender issues is almost identical to that in Britain and the United States.
To learn more, read the full report here:
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Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
For further information, media are invited to contact:
Skander Belouizdad
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skander.belouizdad@macdonaldlaurier.ca
