1. Tory bleeding stopped. Stephen Harper's Conservatives have managed to stanch the blood flowing from the controversy over the Afghan detainee issue, according to new EKOS research. Pollster Frank Graves says that decision by the Harper government to “boycott” the special parliamentary committee on the detainee issue this week helped them to “stabilize.”
“It’s become out of sight, out of mind,” Mr. Graves said this morning. Although, he still believes that the issue has the hallmark of becoming a difficult one for the government, especially if it morphs into an issue of public trust and transparency. But there has been virtually no change since the last poll on Dec. 10, which showed detainee torture allegations were resonating in Quebec and British Columbia, bringing an end to Tory "salad days."
His latest numbers show that a majority remains off the table - Canadians flirted with that earlier in the fall. If an election were called today, this is how things would shake down: 35.9 per cent support for the Conservatives, 26.7 per cent for Michael Ignatieff's Liberals, 17 per cent for Jack Layton's NDP, with the Greens polling at 11.2 per cent and the Bloc at 9.2 per cent.
One point to make, however, is that the Conservatives are polling below their results in last year’s election, according to the EKOS analysis. The poll of 3,386 Canadians was conducted between December 9 and 15. It is accurate plus or minus 1.7, 19 times out of 20.
2. Denmark dispatch. With just hours left until the Copenhagen climate summit ends, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May remains pessimistic for a positive outcome. In fact, as she wrote her daily missive from her BlackBerry, U.S. President Barack Obama was at the podium.
“He is speaking now ... but no one is expecting it to save the day,” she says. Ms. May believes that any deal on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would “be a bad deal.”
The political leader thinks that a break until July would be a huge boon. “A six-month break could get us past the current bind of U.S. politics … It is appalling to see U.S. politicos urge developing countries to take on deep cuts to assist in U.S. domestic politics,” she says, referring to the American bill that proposes a cap-and-trade plan to lower emissions.
But the proposal is controversial. Environmentalists such as Ms. May say “that bill is clearly not good enough, especially since it was shot full of holes to accommodate powerful polluters in the U.S.”
Meanwhile, she and Bianca Jagger both spoke at the same event last night. Shawn Atleo, the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is also at the conference and met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
3. Pollster versus pollster. EKOS's Frank Graves is taking on an assertion yesterday by Praxicus Research pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos “that attitudes to the environment are unlikely to rebound to previous levels even in the face of an improving economy.” Mr. Pantazopoulos says, “the warm front has passed, so to speak.”
Mr. Graves, who has also done much research in the area of global warming and climate change, says this is a “highly provocative claim.”
“The recent cooling of public concern with the issue is a product of an unusual focus on the economy (which will dissipate slowly). The other factor is the tepid support for climate change from the politically dominant boomer cohort. We characterized their long term waning of enthusiasm as the journey from Woodstock to oil stocks.”
However, Mr. Graves says that the longer term tracking - comparing attitudes, values and behaviour - “doesn’t support the conclusion that concern with the environment won’t rebound.” Again, he believes, based on his research, that the downturn in environmental concern is the result of economic woes.”
As for those boomers? “The now larger under-45 cohort will push the boomers aside over the next several years and they place much higher relative emphasis on this issue,” he says. “After all, it’s them and their children who will inherit the mess and they aren’t willing until to PEI is under water to take action.”
(Editorial cartoon by Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail)
