Respondents of all age groups want their own Member of Parliament to support the bill proposed by the NDP’s Leah Gazan.
Vancouver, BC [November 6, 2024] – Practically three-in-five Canadians back a proposal to criminalize residential school denialism, a new Research Co. poll has found.
Leah Gazan, a New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of Parliament from Manitoba, recently introduced a private member’s bill in the House of Commons. The bill seeks to make it a Criminal Code offence to willfully promote hatred against Indigenous people by condoning, denying, justifying or minimizing the facts about residential schools.
In the online survey of a representative national sample, 59% of Canadians want their own MP to vote in favour of Gazan’s bill, while 24% would prefer for their elected representative to vote against it.
“Support for criminalizing residential school denialism is highest among NDP (77%) and Liberal Party (67%) voters in 2021,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “Fewer than half of Conservative Party voters in the last federal election (46%) concur.”
The level of support for Gazan’s bill is similar among Canadians aged 18-to-34 (60%), aged 35-to-54 (59%) and aged 55 and over (58%).
Majorities of Canadians whose desscent is Indigenous (69%), South Asian (65%), East Asian (61%) and European (59%) want their elected representative to support the Gazan’s bill.
This survey confirms the findings of a Research Co. poll conducted in August 2020, which focused on the way Canadians learned about residential schools.
Almost half of Canadians who attended Elementary School and/or High School in Canada (48%) say they did not hear about residential schools at all during their time as students.
Canadians aged 55 and over who attended Elementary School and/or High School in Canada are less likely to have learned about residential schools in the classroom (70%) than their counterparts aged 35-to-54 (51%) and aged 18-to-34 (26%).
Looking back at what they were told as students in Canada, 41% of these respondents say the assessment of residential schools provided by their teachers at the time was positive, while 36% recall it as negative.
The perceptions of these respondents are very different now, with 54% saying they currently view residential schools in a negative light, and 34% saying their opinion is positive.
More than half of Canadians aged 18-to-34 (58%) and aged 55 and over (52%) who attended Elementary School and/or High School in Canada now have a negative view of residential schools.
Methodology: Results are based on an online survey conducted from October 21 to October 23, 2024, among 1,001 adults in Canada. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in Canada. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Find our data tables here and download the press release here.
Photo Credit: TheGoodAndHolyLord
For more information on this poll, please contact:
Mario Canseco, President, Research Co.
778.929.0490
[e] mario.canseco@researchco.ca