Canadians Ponder Potential Fall-Out Of Gomery Report

Toronto, ON - With the public release today of the much-anticipated report by Justice Gomery about the sponsorship scandal, a new CanWest News Service/Global News Ipsos Reid poll indicates that most Canadians (63%) don't think the Gomery Report will change anything meaningful about the way the Federal Government does things.

And regardless of the Gomery Report findings, half agree (51%) that they are still more likely to trust Paul Martin as Prime Minister than Stephen Harper (40% disagree).

Further, Canadians offer no clear choice as to which party and leader they believe would best clean up the corruption uncovered by the Gomery Inquiry: twenty-five percent choose the Liberals, another 25% choose the NDP, and 22% choose the Conservatives.

Canadians are also divided when it comes to the statement that "because of what's been revealed at the Gomery Inquiry, the Martin Liberals have lost their moral right to govern and the opposition parties should force an immediate election" - half (48%) agree with this statement, and half (45%) disagree.

When Canadians are asked whom they think is most to blame for the sponsorship scandal:

• One-third (34%) point to Jean Chrйtien, the Prime Minster at the time;
• 15% say Paul Martin, the Finance Minister at the time;
• 14% say officials from the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec; and
• 12% say public servants who worked at the Department of Public works.

As for the possibility of the Liberal government introducing across-the-board tax cuts in the next few weeks, the majority (68%) of Canadians say they would view such a move with scepticism and believe they would do this "mostly because they want to distract people from the Gomery Report on the sponsorship scandal".

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from October 25th to October 27th 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1001 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 the 2001 Census data.
Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Dr. Darrell Bricker
President & COO
Ipsos Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900