Pulse Of Toronto: Part III

Toronto, ON - Seven in ten Torontonians (69%) say they approve of the job David Miller's been doing as Mayor of the City of Toronto and overall give him barely passing grades when it comes to "providing a vision of what Toronto should be about in the future" (C grade), "managing the issues and priorities of City Council" (C), "cleaning up corruption in municipal politics" (D+), and "keeping residential and business taxes as low as possible" (D+).

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos Reid survey of Torontonians conducted by Ipsos Reid for the National Post, Global News and CFRB. When it comes to living in Toronto, two-thirds of respondents (67%) say they are generally content living here and 13% say they are very happy living here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

But they do notice a growing disparity within the city: 91% agree that the gap between rich and poor in Toronto is growing larger.

And while they may be living right next door to their neighbours, half (47%) of Torontonians feel as though they don't know their neighbours very well. One in ten (12%) agree with the statement that "it would bother me to have next-door neighbours who are visibly from a different culture than myself" - 88% disagree.

Considering their municipal leaders, more than half (57%) of Torontonians disagree with the statement that "Toronto government and emergency response officials are sufficiently prepared to deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster like a hurricane or blizzard" and most (65%) don't believe that they are sufficiently prepared to deal with the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the city.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for the National Post, Global News and CFRB fielded from October 6th to October 12th 2005. For the survey, a representative sample of 500 residents of the City of Toronto was interviewed via an on-line survey vehicle. The sample used in this study has been weighted according to 2001 Census data to accurately reflect the general population of the City of Toronto (see chart below). With a sample of this size, the aggregate results are considered accurate to within 1774.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire population of Toronto been polled. The margin of error will be larger within each sub-grouping of the survey population. 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:

John Wright
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900