The perception of the United States for Canadian people

Résumé du document

Geographically neighbours, Canada and the United Sates share a lot of different things like language, history or an important part of their culture. They are also linked together in a political way, for instance by being two of the three participant countries of the NAFTA. All that elements can bring us to think that there is a real solidarity between the two countries. But global and domestic contexts are evolving and even if Canada stays an important support for the United States, both countries are taking different political paths. Indeed, the United State's evolution of global politics in the latest years, with the nine eleven event and the Iraqi war, bring the United States to act in a very radical way. That is why it seems interesting to have a look on what Canadian people think about Americano-Canadian relationships. Thus, we are going to focus on how Canadian public opinion perceives the evolution in the evolution between Canada and the United States.

Extraits

[...] Diverse criteria can therefore influence public opinion. Indeed, to study Canadian public opinion and its repetition, we are going to divide our study in two different criteria influencing public opinion. The impact of personal characteristics as well as the influence of the social environment is the two main explication factors of the repartition of the public opinion and political attitudes. First, the age appears as deciding criterion acting on public opinion. Oldest cohorts are most likely to criticize the relationships between the United States and Canada since 30,8 percents of the 55 to 64 years old cohort and 28,4 percents of the 65 and older think that these relations were very tense in the past. [...]

[...] Nevertheless we can deny that this event had a real impact on global politics and especially on relationships of the United States with others countries. To conclude, if people mostly think that the relationships between Canada and the United States are declining, this idea varies slightly according different data such as age, wealth or social context. However these changes are not determining and can depend of the survey's context. Indeed, the way to ask the question, the personalities of the interviewer or the question asked before, are as many parameters that can affect the nature of the answer. [...]

[...] That is why; we can also see some differences between people whose mother tongue is English and those who it is French. Indeed, English speakers think that the relationships between Canada and the United States were very tense in the past than French speakers (25 percents against 19.4 percents). It also appears very clearly in QA5 survey where 75 percents of French speaking people think that the United State's reputation has deteriorated versus only 65.9 percents of English speaking people. [...]

[...] However, this tendency is not valid for the education level. Indeed, regarding this consideration, high education lead people to be more moderate. Nevertheless, the tendency remains valid in this moderate sight since 59.8 percents of people who went to the University think that the relations are become somewhat tense over the past versus 49.4 percents of high school and grade school graduates. As for the cohort effect, we can imagine that people who share same social conditions, with the same kind of work or of lifestyle, are more likely to have same reactions and same points of view. [...]

[...] This volatility can be explained by a lot of other factors such as social context. On some topics, huge gaps appear between different groups of people. Indeed, people living in different regions have different ways to see political issues. For instance, Quebec seems to always be less in favour for the United States than other Canadian regions ( 14.9 percents of Quebecois are motivate for give up a trip in the United States versus only 3.2 percents of Atlantic people, and 17.7 percents of Quebecois think that the relationship between the two countries has been tense whereas 28.7 percents of Atlantic people do.) These gaps can be explained by diverse factors. [...]