OTTAWA - Environmental policy is both the top priority of Canadian voters and the subject of the most dissatisfaction with government performance, according to a new poll.
The survey by Decima Research, released Thursday to The Canadian Press as Prime Minister Stephen Harper was switching environment ministers, found the environment to be the most pressing preoccupation of Canadians, eclipsing health care, the Afghanistan conflict, taxes and the economy, among other areas.
Some 19 per cent of respondents said the environment was the issue that concerned them most personally, followed by health care at 13 per cent.
Since a similar Decima survey in September, mentions of the environment as the top issue have jumped 13 percentage points.
The latest poll of 1,727 respondents, conducted from Dec. 22 to Jan. 2 while much of Canada was experiencing profoundly unseasonable weather, found the sentiment spanned the country. The poll is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
Respondents in every province except Manitoba and Saskatchewan -- where health care was on top -- said the environment was their top preoccupation. Men and women, every age group and every income group, also picked the environment before any other priority.
Among respondents who claimed partisan affiliations, only Conservative supporters did not say the environment was the top issue. Self-identified Conservative voters put health care and the environment in a statistical dead heat, 13 per cent to 12 per cent.
But even Tory voters in the survey said the government is doing a poor job on the environment.
Decima asked respondents to rate federal government action in 20 different areas.
Nationally, environmental policy came out the worst, with 74 per cent saying the government is doing a bad job and only 18 per cent approving.
In Alberta, a Conservative party stronghold, 27 per cent said the government was doing a good job on the environment and 61 per cent said a poor job. Among Tory voters, 32 per cent approved of the government's environmental record.
Bruce Anderson, Decima's CEO, said no political party should get too smug about the poll results.
"While some of these numbers appear on the surface to be an indictment of the federal government specifically, in truth most of our work really points to a sentiment that is about everyone needing to do more to deal with issues like climate change," said the pollster.
