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Steady Growth in Canadian Support for NAFTA | June 12 2003 |
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Support for Canada's involvement in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Mexico has grown in the past two and a half years from 64% of Canadians to 70%, according to an Ipsos-Reid/CTV/Globe and Mail poll conducted last week. Support for NAFTA is running at or around 75% among decided voters for most of the main parties - the exceptions are decided NDP voters (47%) and decided Green Party voters (63%). Residents of British Columbia (56%) and Saskatchewan/Manitoba (64%) are the least supportive of NAFTA involvement. Despite the 70% approval, only half (51%) think NAFTA has benefited Canada to date. However, this is up from 40% in January 2001. One-quarter (25%) of Canadians today think NAFTA has hurt Canada, down from 32% in January 2001, and one-fifth (19%) continue to think it has had no impact (22% in January 2001). With NAFTA having just passed its tenth anniversary, seven in ten Canadians (69%) also believe that it is a positive trend that the Canadian and US economies have been growing closer together over the past few years (22% 'very positive', 46% 'somewhat positive'), while 27% think it is a negative trend (12% 'very negative', 15% 'somewhat negative'). The poll was conducted between June 3rd and 5th and is based on a randomly selected sample of 1006 adult Canadians. Simple printable version of this article. Email this article to a friend.
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