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Recent Enbridge polling

Has the positive recommendation of the Enbridge Joint Review Panel resulted in a shift in public opinion in favour of the project?

Has the positive recommendation of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel (JRP) resulted in a shift in public opinion in favour of the project?

Not according to the most recent polling, says Dogwood Initiative executive director Will Horter.

The Justason Marketing Intelligence poll, commissioned by Victoria’s Dogwood Initiative and three other environmental groups, was released last week. It is the first poll done since the completion of the federal JRP process last December.

Since the last Dogwood polling prior to the conclusion of the JRP, the number of B.C. residents opposed to the project has remained consistent, at 64 per cent. Only 32 per cent of respondents said they trusted the JRP process.

In response to the question, “Do you support or oppose allowing crude oil supertankers through B.C.’s northern inside coastal waters?”, 50 per cent of respondents strongly opposed the prospect and further 14 per cent somewhat opposed the idea.

That makes 64 per cent of total respondents opposed to tankers through B.C.’s northern inside coastal waters. Twenty-nine per cent of respondents supported the proposition (with 12 per cent strongly in support and another 17 per cent somewhat in support).

That leaves seven per cent undecided, those respondents who had never heard of the project or weren’t sure if they had.

You may have noticed the Enbridge pipeline polling question was constructed without reference to the construction of the pipeline itself.

The question was posed this way, said Horter, to highlight the tanker traffic equation of the Enbridge proposal (awareness of the Enbridge proposal itself was measured in a prior question).

“Virtually all industry polling is in relation to a question that doesn’t fully describe the project,” Horter said. “Enbridge sponsored polls don’t mention tankers, and that’s the most controversial part of this project. In our questions, we explain that it’s oil tankers [and] pipelines. Other polls in the past few months have only talked about pipelines with no mention of the crude oil supertankers that would inevitably come with them.”

Other recent polling has shown an increase in support for the Enbridge proposal.

A November 2013 Insight West poll showed a rise in support among B.C. residents for the Enbridge proposal.  The poll question was focussed on the pipeline itself with a reference to offshore markets, but lacking specifics of how pipeline product would reach that market.

“The Insight West polling question was a biased question,” Horter said. “It didn’t mention the full impact of the project. It didn’t mention oil tankers.”

When the question is put in the context of increased coastal tanker traffic, “The numbers have remained consistent,” Horter said. “We asked a very similar question two years ago… and essentially got the same response.”

“People have very strong opinions about oil tankers,” Horter added. “If you ask a question that doesn’t include that, it’s not a surprise there would be additional support.”

“When you ask a question that doesn’t include tankers, then people think, ‘well I’d rather have pipelines than oil tankers,’ so they support the project in that way.”

The question of bias enters into any polling question. If Enbridge-sponsored polling is, as Horter suggests, slanted in favour of the project, then wouldn’t Dogwood Initiative polling be just as slanted against the project?

“We don’t have to bias our poll,” Horter said. “We know that in a straight up question that provides a fair explanation of what the project is, British Columbians are opposed.”

The bias of the Dogwood poll was tested by including a final question that asked if the poll-taker thought the sponsor of the survey were also a supporter of the Enbridge proposal.

Only 16 per cent of respondents thought the poll was designed by a group against Enbridge Northern Gateway, and 34 per cent thought the poll was sponsored by a group in favour of the project.

This, said Horter, showed the question to be neutral.

But Enbridges’s Ivan Giesbrecht questions that neutrality.

“I would say that it doesn’t accurately reflect what Janet Holder and other members of our Northern Gateway team are hearing in our conversations with British Columbians across the province,” Giesbrecht said. “People in this province – including many British Columbians like myself who work on this project – value our unique natural environment and want to protect it.”