I've Always Envied the Family Cat, and Now I Know Why

"What Canadians Really Believe"
(From the death penalty to same-sex relationships, a new poll shows huge shifts.)

I was lunching (or supping I suppose, given the hour) yesterday while sifting through an old copy of Macleans magazine (well, old for a news magazine) and stumbled upon this article by Ken MacQueen. The article is based on a October 2009 Angus Reid poll asking Canadians questions about their beliefs on "ethical issues". While I'd love to get my hands on the full, unfiltered poll results, the article contains some of the more interesting statistics, as well as a few different perspectives on the implications these results might have.

Many of the results (or at least those mentioned in the article) didn't surprise me (for example, fewer than 3% of respondents thought that birth control was amoral), but there were a couple of exceptions:

While roughly 85% of Canadians have no trouble with premarital (or more likely "a-marital", to coin a term) sex or with divorce, only 15% are willing to pardon marital infidelity (basically saying that, while society has no business in the bedrooms of the nation, a promise is a promise).

More Canadians (41% vs. 34%) oppose medical testing on animals than oppose the death penalty; in fact, a full 53% of Canadians support capital punish. This is probably the only statistic in the entire article that really disappointed me. Let alone the whole rehabilitative vs. retributive argument, my strongest objection to capital punishment (other than being literally unable to think of a reasoned, logical argument in its defence) can be neatly summed up by the case of Canadian Steven Truscott.

Anyway, it's an interesting read, and certainly insightful into how this country thinks.