Canadians misunderstand political system: Survey

Wellity, wellity... It looks like a recent survey prepared by Ipsos Reid for the Dominion Institute might explain the lack of interest for politics in the general Canadian population: ignorance. I mean, we all could have guessed it, but this put down on paper some of the misses among Canadians when it comes to what's going on in Ottawa.

"Canadians certainly were interested by what was going on in Ottawa, but lacked in many cases the basic knowledge to form informed opinions," said Marc Chalifoux, executive director of the Dominion Institute.

According to the CTV article quoting the survey which asked four seemingly simple questions to respondents, 75 % misidentified our Head of State as either the PM or the GG, when the right answer remains the Queen.

Only 59 % correctly picked constitutional monarchy, when asked to identify our political system. Better than nothing, those number do strongly match voter turn out from the 2008 general election. While 25 % picked a "co-operative assembly," 17 % answered a "representative republic."

How is our PM selected? 51 % wrongly answered that Canadians elect the prime minister directly. But in fact, Canadians elect local members of Parliament and the leader of the party with the most members by tradition becomes PM at the request of the GG.

Finally, and unsurprisingly thanks to recent events, 90 % responded correctly that the GG does have the power to refuse the PM's request for an election, if the opposition defeats the government with a confidence vote in the Commons.

"These questions we're asking aren't just trivia," Chalifoux said. "These are part of the basic tool kit of knowledge that citizens need to function in a democracy. Our school system needs to be doing a better job of training young people to be citizens."

No doubt on that one. Somebody, come and save us from ourselves, quick!