Canadians Look Back On 2006 And Look Forward To 2007

Toronto, ON - As the year 2006 comes to a close and our thoughts turn to the coming days of 2007, a new Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of CanWest/Global News reports that the majority of Canadians (76%) look back upon the year 2006 as "good year overall" in comparison to years past. One in five (21%), though, say 2006 was a "bad year overall" in their opinion.

And optimism abounds for most Canadians when it comes to them personally, their family, and their country, in the coming year:

• 88% are optimistic that 2007 will be a good year for them "personally" (10% are pessimistic);
• 88% are optimistic that 2007 will be a good year for their "family" (8% are pessimistic); and
• 78% are optimistic that 2007 will be a good year for "Canada" (18% are pessimistic).

But, Canadians are split about what kind of year they see for the "world" in 2007: Half (46%) are pessimistic about the world for the coming year and half (49%) are optimistic.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid survey fielded from December 12th to December 14th 2006. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1,000 adult Canadians were interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the aggregate results are considered accurate to within 1773.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within each sub-grouping of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to Census data.