Laws not meant to be bent: Poll
Toronto Sun
An overwhelming majority of Canadians are unwilling to bend laws to make room for cultural beliefs.
The hard-line attitude is revealed in a Sun Media poll conducted by Leger Marketing, which shows 78% of people from coast-to-coast say everyone must respect Canadian laws -- even if they clash with the cultural values they hold dear.
"The legal system is the legal system, and for a lot of Canadians that's the rule of thumb we live by," said Leger VP Dave Scholz. "If someone is moving to this country, they need to learn the legal system prior to being here."
Only 15% think Canada should adapt our legal system to make room for religious and cultural beliefs.
When it comes to the law's role in curbing racism, only one-third of Canadians believe uttering a racial slur should be a crime. Another 46% believe free speech should reign.
And while the poll has previously shown that more than a third of Canadians have a problem with women wearing the veil --that nearly half of us hold racist views -- most insist that being around people of different ethnic backgrounds enriches their lives.
"But if all that means is going out for ethnic food on a Saturday night, that's not really being enriched. Enriched means embracing all the cultural traditions of the new population coming in," Scholz said. "Everyone's view of enriching is different, but from the results we've seen, I don't think it's entirely embracing all aspects of an ethnic community. It's sort of temporarily embracing it at times."
While just over half of Canadians see racism as a problem in their city, only 32% think a vigorous fight is necessary to combat it. Half of us would be willing to sign a petition or report a racist incident, yet less than a quarter would actually put up cash for the fight to stop racism.
Scholz said that reflects a "head-in-the-sand" approach to a real problem.
"Most people think it's a problem that's going away, and to that end we don't think we feel need to personally finance the problem," Scholz said. "We can report it to authorities, maybe we'll sign petitions, but we don't actually want to put any real drive behind it ... We're not fighting it. We're trying to hide it or avoid it, even though we're seeing it and hearing about it."
This online Leger Marketing poll, commissioned by Sun Media, surveyed a representative national sample of 3,092 adult Canadians between Dec. 27, 2006, and Jan. 5, 2007. Responses are considered accurate within plus or minus 1.8 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
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