OTTAWA — Satisfaction with Canadian democracy is at an all-time low, new public opinion research released Monday shows.
The online survey of 2,287 Canadians found that just 55 per cent are very or somewhat satisfied with the way democracy works in this country. That’s sharply down from the 75 per cent who expressed satisfaction in response to an identical question in 2004.
“That was certainly a surprise to us,” said Alison Loat, co-founder and executive director of Samara, the charitable organization that commissioned the survey by Feedback Research. “We knew the trend. It’s not ticking up. But to see that large a decline in such a short period was interesting.”
Samara, which strives to improve political participation in Canada, said views about the sorry state of Canadians democracy were consistent across the country with the sole exception of francophone Quebecers, who reported even higher levels of dissatisfaction.
Although Canadians believe their democracy is successful at enabling freedom of expression and equality, they are disappointed with their political representation, Samara’s survey report said.
When asked to rate the performance of members of Parliament, just 36 per cent were satisfied. Moreover, a scant three per cent are very satisfied, while 33 per cent are only fairly satisfied.
According to Samara, a leading source of dissatisfaction has to do with MPs’ priorities. Many Canadians think they do a better job of representing the views of their parties than they do representing their constituents.
Asked to rank the most important roles of MPs, survey respondents selected holding the government to account and representing the views of constituents as the top two.
But in what Samara called a “bleak report card,” they awarded failing grades — 45 per cent and 46 per cent respectively — when asked how well MPs performed those roles.
By contrast, they gave MPs their highest mark, 61 per cent, for representing the views of their party, a role they ranked much lower.
“In other words,” says Samara’s report, “Canadians feel MPs are doing the best job at the very thing Canadians see as a low priority.”
Loat said the findings point to a “disconnect” between what Canadians think is important and how they think MPs are spending their time.
“There’s certainly a view that MPs may be focusing on the wrong things, or that the work MPs are doing to hold government to account or represent constituents is obscured, perhaps by political party messaging or the dominance of certain narratives that are coming out of question period,” she said.
In an earlier project, Samara interviewed 65 former MPs about their life in politics. Many reported feeling that they had spent too much time working in the interest of their parties. Others were uncomfortable when party discipline obliged them to vote against the views of their constituents.
Samara’s report said the survey research “confirms that MPs are not the only ones who recognize the primacy of political parties. Canadians sense it too, and feel that their MPs’ work representing constituents is falling short.
“What does it suggest about Canadian political parties if both MPs and citizens see those parties as being at odds with MPs’ abilities to represent their constituents?”
Interestingly, Samara’s research also found the Canadians look to MPs to tackle public problems. When asked who they turn to when it comes to policy issues that concern them, politicians outranked all other groups, including the media, business, interest groups, protesters, non-profit organizations and religious leaders.
That suggests steps should be taken to ensure that political parties and MPs better reflect citizens and their priorities, Samara said.
“With citizens at the centre, the political system would be both more representative and accountable, something that would contribute to citizens’ increased satisfaction with Canadian democracy.”
In the online survey, Samara over-sampled three categories of Canadians who are usually under-represented: young people, immigrants and newcomers, and people of lower socio-economic status. The survey results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The results reported Monday were drawn from a much more comprehensive survey that Samara plans to use to help build a yearly “democracy index” in 2013.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
