Canadians Reflect On The Fifth Anniversary Of 9/11/01

Toronto, ON -With the haunting five-year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attacks upon us, a new national Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of CanWest/Global News reveals that, five years hence, many Canadians continue to be deeply affected by the events of that fateful morning.

Specifically:

• 28% feel that in comparison to everything else that has taken place in their life the attacks were "life altering" and they've "never been the same since"; further, 21% indicate that their life outlook and activities are not the same as they were before the attacks;
• 17% "can't watch television or movie recounts of the event because the recall has a traumatizing effect".

Further,

• 25% are scared to fly outside of Canada because of terrorism; and
• 34% agree they are "personally more suspicious of people who are from the Middle East or South East Asia" (Ipsos Reid has tracked this attitude since just after the terrorist attacks: 27% indicated that held this opinion during a September 17-20th, 2001, survey and 45% indicated this in an August of 2002 survey).

Half (46%), though, admit that they "are personally tired of hearing about the events" of `Nine-Eleven'.

With five years perspective in tow, half of Canadians believe that Nine-Eleven was "a very specific violent reaction by certain groups of people to foreign policies of the U.S. government in certain parts of the world, and have now been extended to its allies such as Britain because it support the United States". However, 36% of Canadians contend that "Nine-Eleven was a terrorist attack that signalled the beginning of a powerful global movement led by fanatics who want to destroy all western-style, affluent democracies"

Intermingled with these different perspectives is the existence of an underlying vein of scepticism within the Canadian public towards the attacks, as 22% say "the events of `Nine Eleven' including the thousands of American citizens who lost their lives on that day" were actually orchestrated by a group of highly influential Americans who intended to profit, gain power, and protect Osama bin Laden.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News and fielded from August 29th-31st, and September 6th-7th*, 2006. For these survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1000 and 887 adult Canadians was 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.