Michael Adams is president of the Environics Institute for Survey Research.
Recent surveys have found Canadians to be supportive of their country's military deployment to Iraq and Syria to aid in the fight against the Islamic State. A recent Ipsos Reid survey found three-quarters of Canadians (74 per cent) in favour of using Canadian fighter jets to strike IS targets in Iraq, while surveys from Ekos and the Angus Reid Institute have found smaller majorities of the public (60 and 54 per cent, respectively) supportive of the mission in general.
These numbers are clearly favourable to the current government's approach, and may help the Conservatives as they head toward a fall election. But if opinion trends from Canada's involvement in Afghanistan a decade ago is any indication, public support may well soften in the months ahead. Indeed, the public may turn against the mission if things don't go well.
When Canadian troops were first deployed to Afghanistan, the public strongly endorsed the mission. In 2002, 75 per cent were supportive – 38 per cent strongly so, in the Environics Institute's Focus Canada tracking surveys. By 2004, support was down to 61 per cent, and from 2006 through 2008, it fluctuated around half (within six points on either side of 50 per cent).
In March of 2008, when Canadian troops had been on the ground in Afghanistan for six years, we asked the 54 per cent in our sample who did not support the Afghan mission why they held that position. The most common answers: that too many Canadian soldiers were dying; that the mission's objectives were unclear; and that problems in that region were not Canada's business.
The current deployment is vulnerable to all the same concerns. As missions drag on and become more painful, more ambiguous and more expensive, the sense of enthusiasm and purpose that first drove them tends to diminish. And when the end game seems endless, people want out.
Generally speaking, since the Second World War, Canadians have expressed a fairly clear view of why and how they are willing to see their military deployed. First, it is important to note that the armed forces have consistently been the most trusted institution in Canada. Eight in 10 Canadians express great faith in their military (the Supreme Court comes in second), so any objection to specific missions is an objection to government decisions and not a reflection on public sentiment toward our men and women in uniform.
Historically, the public has taken great pride in Canadian peacekeeping efforts, and in Lester Pearson's role in the development of modern peacekeeping. Even after Canada's actual peacekeeping activity declined to almost nothing, a plurality of the public has continued to see peacekeeping as their country's most positive contribution to the world. In 1993, 40 per cent of Canadians saw peacekeeping as their top contribution, the most popular answer by far. Foreign aid came in second at 19 per cent. By 2011, just 18 per cent of Canadians named peacekeeping as Canada's best contribution to the world, a substantially smaller proportion but still the top answer. Foreign aid still came in second (13 per cent).
When combat has been necessary, Canadians have tended to favour multilateralism, preferring to work under United Nations auspices instead of as an unquestioning sidekick to the United States. This preference is clear when we look back at the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. That March, when the war began, about a third of Canadians (34 per cent) agreed with opposition leader Stephen Harper that Canada should be marching to war alongside the Americans. Sixty-five per cent of Canadians disapproved of Canadian participation in a unilateral U.S. intervention, 49 per cent strongly so – 69 per cent strongly so in Quebec. Under prime minister Jean Chrétien's leadership, Canada remained bravely unwilling to join the "coalition of the willing."
Although the public was unsupportive of the idea of "going it alone" with George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair, they were open to a mission with broad international support. That same March (the same month just a third supported the U.S. invasion), a strong majority of Canadians, seven in 10, said they would approve of Canadian participation in the Iraq mission if it were sanctioned by the United Nations.
Why would a society that has generally been favourably disposed to peacekeeping and multilateralism be supportive today of a U.S.-led action in a region whose problems seem so intractable? Because support for a military intervention is usually strongest at the outset. Governments are actively persuading the public of the importance and urgency of the mission, so the upside is in plain view. The downside is typically not yet evident, since nothing has yet gone wrong. (Although in this case, Canada has already suffered a casualty: Sergeant Andrew Doiron, sadly an apparent victim of "friendly fire.")
Opponents of military action struggle to make potential negative consequences as vivid in the public imagination as the threat military action would seek to combat – and in the Islamic State's case, the brutality is very vivid indeed. Finally, the public tends to be less well informed about foreign-policy issues than about domestic issues that affect them more directly, and so people are often willing to give elected leaders the benefit of the doubt, until and unless they see compelling evidence that the government is wrong.
In the months ahead, Canadians will follow the headlines and make evolving judgments about whether their government is right or wrong to be in Iraq and Syria. Canadians are supportive for now, but recent history suggests that unless things go astonishingly well, the feeling may not last as long as the mission – indeed, it may not even last until October.