Canadians prefer tangible foreign aid to value spreading: Poll
by Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, November 11, 2008
OTTAWA – Canadians say providing bridges, roads and other forms of concrete foreign assistance is more important than spreading such Canadian values as democracy, freedom of speech and gender equality, says a new Environics survey.
The survey, being released Wednesday, also suggests a majority of Canadians surveyed disagree with the federal government’s decision to send back to the United States those American army deserters who have sought to move to Canada to avoid having to fight in Iraq. The split was 56 per cent to 38 per cent.
By a spread of 48-to-30 per cent, Canadians also opposed the federal government’s decision to let Canadian Omar Khadr – who is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was only 16 years old – be tried in a U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The remainder were either unaware of the issue or had no opinion on it.