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<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nCanadians are more attached to their country than the people of any other advanced democracy on Earth: survey<\/span><\/p>\n Michael Valpy<\/a><\/span>\u00a0of the Toronto Star –\u00a0<\/span>Canadians are more attached to their country than the people of any other advanced democracy on Earth, says Ottawa\u2019s EKOS Research Associates, which for decades has gauged the glue that holds the nation together.<\/p>\n We beat out the Americans, who rank second, and are strides ahead of the Mexicans, according to a North America-wide survey compiled by EKOS last month.\u00a0We\u2019re hooked on the place we call home and so, very quickly, are new arrivals. First comes belonging to family and then comes Canada. Indeed, research by EKOS, which has worked side by side with a year-long Atkinson Foundation project examining the state of social cohesion in Canada, finds that foreign-born Canadians have a marginally stronger attachment to the country than do native born \u2014 77 per cent versus 75 per cent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In any event, the bond has been high across all demographic cohorts for at least the past 15 years except for a modest decline among the young, says EKOS president Frank Graves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a testament to how well our multiculturalism still works, EKOS finds no differences in values held by native-born and foreign-born Canadians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indeed, it finds that the percentage of Canadians attached to ethnic identities is dropping dramatically \u2014 down 20 percentage points over the past 20 years despite rising barriers to integration posed by a diminishing supply of good jobs and the fact that virtually all newcomers belong to so-called visible minorities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In fact, if Quebecers\u2019 and aboriginals\u2019 lukewarm feelings toward Canada are factored out \u2014 less than 40 per cent of Quebecers report a strong attachment to the country \u2014 Graves says Canadians\u2019 bond to their land would very likely lead the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What EKOS and the research project sponsored by the\u00a0Atkinson Charitable Foundation\u00a0<\/a>, in partnership with the Honderich family and the Toronto Star, conclude is that the bonds that hold Canadians together are unraveling, leaving a nation profoundly polarized along fault-lines of age, education and the workplace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Young, highly educated and progressive \u201cnext Canada\u201d is disconnecting itself from formal participation in Canada\u2019s democracy. The percentage that voted in the 2011 federal election was under 40 per cent and Graves predicts it may well slip into the teens by the next election or two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNext Canada\u201d sees a nation shaped by public institutions, chiefly governments, that favour aging Boomers who vote en masse and heavily en bloc for Stephen Harper\u2019s Conservatives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe net result is a gerontocracy that reflects the exaggerated and imagined fears of older Canada precisely at a time when the country urgently needs the more optimistic and innovative outlooks of the relatively scarcer younger portion of our society,\u201d says Graves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And the arrival of Harper\u2019s Conservative administration, the first national government to govern clearly (or at least rhetorically) from the right, has resulted in a polarized, ideological Canada \u2014 not unique to Canada but forcefully present.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Canadians\u2019 trust in their national democracy has reached a historic 50-year low. In 1956, almost 75 per cent of Canadians said they trusted the government to do the right thing all or most of the time. By late last year, only 28 per cent did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A mere four years ago, 45 per cent thought their democracy was healthy. A year ago \u2014 before the clusterduffy struck \u2014 only 33 per cent did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2004, 42 per cent of Canadians thought the federal government was moving in the wrong direction. By mid-2013, 56 per cent did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite being governed by an ideological conservative administration on the right, Canadians as a whole are significantly less connected to social conservative values than they were 20 years ago and only 25 per cent share the government\u2019s values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n An EKOS poll for the Atkinson project found that nearly 40 per cent of Canadians would break a federal law with which they don\u2019t agree. And only 15 per cent of younger Canadians, and 25 per cent of older Canadians, say they trust each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Polarization \u2014 primarily along age and education fault-lines \u2014 has taken place around the role and power of the state, around foreign policy, around civil rights versus national security, austerity versus social investment and, most profoundly, around fears of economic insecurity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thus both values and economic self-interest along with a lot of grey hair unify the Conservative Party vote \u2014 38 per cent in the 2011 election \u2014 in a way that doesn\u2019t unify or motivate those who don\u2019t like their economic futures or who don\u2019t connect with social-conservative values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This second group comprises the biggest chunk of the population but it is politically shapeless: the young, the university educated and cosmopolitan, most Quebecers, the expanding swaths of the middle class and immigrants who are slipping into economic dejection and workplace precariousness and realizing that the dream of progress, of inevitable social and economic betterment, is likely at an end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Canada\u2019s middle class is in emotional crisis, sunk in resentment, stagnancy and insecurity, and deeply pessimistic about its economic and social future. The bleak statistics of inequality are replacing social inclusivity as the country\u2019s new norm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A just-published, exhaustive inquiry into inequality edited by public policy scholars Keith Banting and John Myles reports that transfers and what\u2019s left of Canada\u2019s progressive tax system no longer offsets the growth of inequality generated by the market.Over the past decade and a half, says EKOS, the middle two out of three Canadians who called themselves middle class has dropped to a little more than one out of two. Think of what that means: People are deselecting themselves from the middle class. It is a phenomenon EKOS\u2019s Graves says he\u2019s never before encountered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Finally, a small survey of Quebecers\u2019 attitudes toward the rest of Canada show the two solitudes are increasingly that: solitudes. Quebecers see their English-speaking co-citizens as dull, conservative, still in the grip of religion and, in the West, as U.S.-style cowboys in the West. Meanwhile, they see themselves as laid-back romantics and visionaries with a better sense of humour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In large part, Canada\u2019s fragmenting social cohesion is a systemic issue: Like all the advanced democracies, Canada is becoming a more individualistic society. We actually are falling apart, less connected to each other through our communities and families and especially our workplaces. That\u2019s not new although it\u2019s accelerating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The erosion of basic trust today, says Graves, \u201cis a threat to both social cohesion and even economic performance. Skepticism and wariness are useful up to a point, but it\u2019s hard to make much progress when so many people mistrust so many others so much of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still, our attachment to the country remains sturdy except for the two groups the dominant society hasn\u2019t absorbed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Why?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNational attachment is rooted in pretty primordial values and identify factors, and hence it\u2019s pretty stable stuff,\u201d says Graves. \u201cI also think that this country is very blessed with an abundance of natural assets and societal advantages that make it a pretty attractive place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canadians are more attached to their country than the people of any other advanced democracy on Earth: survey Michael Valpy\u00a0of the Toronto Star –\u00a0Canadians are more attached to their country than the people of any other advanced democracy on Earth, … Continue reading \n\n\n\n\n\nBut… and you know there had to be one…<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSupport for the Harper administration draws together those who support small-c conservative values and minimalist government and those who are still optimistic about their economic futures.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Digital](\"http:\/\/www.worldline.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/wl_save_homephone.png\")
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