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by Dennis Trudeau, host of Canada Now for CBC Montreal
Two Solitudes? March 31 When it comes to politics, anglophone and francophone Quebecers have their differences, but our polling shows they also have a lot in common in their opinions on public issues. You may feel you've been bombarded by polls in the election campaign, and goodness knows, we've seen a lot of them. The polls, however, do contain some things worth thinking about, things the media usually don't report, preferring to give only a couple of results from their surveys: usually the results showing who people say they will vote for—party preference—plus levels of satisfaction with the government and preferred leader. Most polls do have lots of other information worth looking at. For instance the SOM poll the CBC brought out on Tuesday, March 25. And let's get the housekeeping out of the way right away. SOM interviewed 1,000 people by phone between March 18 and March 24, and the results are accurate within a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. (Any news organization which neglects to give you that information with their poll is just not doing their job.) So what does our CBC SOM poll have to tell us about Quebec voters? Well, for one thing, anglophone and francophone Quebecers have their differences, but when you look deeper into the CBC poll results, anglos and francos have more in common than you might think. In fact, we asked 32 questions, and in 18 cases, anglos and francos held similar opinions in almost identical proportions. When it comes to gas taxes and luxury taxes on those big SUVs, the two linguistic groups have almost identical views: half of us don't want luxury taxes on jeeps or higher taxes on gasoline to combat climate change. The poll shows 60 per cent of francos and 61 per cent of anglos agree Quebec has too many public servants. And on serious issues that hit home, such as the balanced budget, the dilemma of more spending on education or paying down the debt or the idea of a private sector in health care, anglos and francos are remarkably close, within five per centage points. More anglos than francos would prefer tax cuts to more spending on health, but even then, 68 per cent of anglos agree with the 78 per cent of francos who prefer the health investment to a tax cut. Obviously, when it comes to which party they will vote for, which leader they prefer and what they would do about the municipal mergers, franco and anglo opinions differ profoundly. The anglophone opposition to sovereignty and their intense desire to maintain their identity are the reasons anglos differ so resoundingly on those topics. But it is surprising that on just about every other issue dealing with daily life in Quebec, from schools, to health, from taxes on gas and SUVs to the way Quebec runs Loto-Québec and the Liquor Board, anglos and francos are remarkably similar. That makes me wonder: why do the other parties resolutely write off the anglo vote, not advertising in English to any extent and refusing a leaders debate in English? Is this just another example of the Two Solitudes? |
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 Since joining the CBC in 1979, Dennis Trudeau has hosted a number of radio and television programs. He joined Newswatch, Montreal's flagship television newscast, in the fall of 1987. Trudeau has anchored the news through the Oka Crisis, the Meech Lake talks, Quebec elections and the sovereignty referendum. He now hosts Canada Now for CBC Montreal.
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