Prime Minister's Trip Does Little To Sway Public Support For Mission In Afghanistan

Toronto, ON - While Prime Minister Harper's recent trip to Afghanistan may have bolstered Canadian troop morale, it did not appear to sway public opinion regarding the mission, according to a new Ipsos Reid survey conducted for CanWest/Global News.

Fifty percent of Canadians feel that "Canadian troops are performing a vital mission in Afghanistan and they should stay as long as it takes for them to succeed" (essentially unchanged from 52% recorded in a March 2-6 Ipsos Reid survey), while 46% believe our "troops should not be deployed in Afghanistan and they should be brought home as soon as possible".

• Residents of Alberta (67%), Atlantic Canada (58%) are the most likely to believe the troops should stay for as long as it takes to succeed.
• Residents of Quebec (62%) are the most likely to believe we should bring our troops home now.

Just over half of Canadians (52%) support the "use of Canada's troops for security and combat efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan" (25% strongly support) -support is essentially unchanged from the 54% recorded earlier this month. Forty-six percent (unchanged) oppose our troops operations in Afghanistan (29% strongly oppose).

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWes /Global News and fielded from March 21st to March 23rd, 2006. For this survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1000 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

Please open the attached PDF to view the full release 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