Winnipeg: The Frontier Centre for Public Policy today released a COMPAS poll which shows most Canadians prefer to hold off on signing a global warming treaty in Copenhagen; reasons include concern over the economy and doubts about the sureness of the science.
In practice, few Canadians oppose signing such a treaty under any circumstance (14%) while few also favour going ahead with it (25%), as shown in table 1.
The largest cluster (51%) favours postponement of signing–either until we can be more confident that the global economy is coming out of recession (25%) or that there is strong agreement that the scientific research attributing climate change to humans is fully objective (26%).
Thus, among Canadians with an opinion on the issue, 73% favour postponing a decision (57%) or not signing at all (16%) while 28% advocate signing a treaty at Copenhagen.
“Some doubt about when the global economy will recover from the recession and some doubt about the scientific arguments behind the push for a treaty on global warming are the chief drivers in causing Canadians to want the federal government to postpone signing a treaty,” observed Conrad Winn, president of COMPAS and principal investigator on the poll.
The poll was conducted across Canada on November 28, 2009; sample size was 1,000 and is deemed accurate to within approximately three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
To download a complete copy of the COMPAS poll and questions, click here
For more information and to arrange an interview with the study’s author, media (only) should contact:
Conrad Winn – COMPAS
Mark Milke – Research Director
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
