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Multiple times this month, the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) has published polls on Indigenous issues.
Last week, the pollster reported that despite “historic and controversial developments in Indigenous land rights” in British Columbia due to the province’s inclusion of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in its laws, “new data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds British Columbians largely divided over this commitment from their province.”
Media picked up right away on the poll’s blunt and opinionated conclusions, reporting data suggesting 39 per cent of those surveyed think the province’s commitment to UNDRIP legislation is necessary, and even more — 44 per cent — think the laws go “too far” in limiting provincial authority over land and resources.
That poll’s results line up well with another one released a few days earlier, in which ARI pollsters found “Canadians are divided on Indigenous rights, but united on financial transparency.”
The poll identified that “four in five (82%)” of Canadians desire the reimplementation of the First Nations Financial Transparency Act (FNFTA) — introduced by former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s government – which required First Nations bands to publicly disclose their audited financial statements, including the salaries of chiefs and councillors.
Critics argued the law was redundant since First Nations governments already reported this information, and noted its standards far exceeded those for municipal, provincial and federal authorities. Upon taking office in 2015, former prime minister Justin Trudeau paused the FNTFA.
A week prior to the FNFTA report, ARI pollsters published a poll stating that while two-thirds of Canadians agree that “Indian Residential Schools were a form of cultural genocide,” there is “widespread hesitancy” to accept that anomalies on the grounds of a former residential school sites are evidence of unmarked children’s graves unless “further information is publicly available to verify through excavation.”
The report takes particular aim on the leadership of Tkʼemlúps te Secwépem First Nation, who announced in May 2021 that ground penetrating radar had identified 215 potential gravesites of lost students at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
While searching is still taking place — and scientists and researchers have stated numerous times that results are years away — pollsters at ARI felt it necessary to make this rather odd and totalizing statement: “To date, no human remains have been confirmed or exhumed and suspected anomalies remain unverified. The federal government has provided more than $12 million to assist in the investigation, but disturbance of the sites has not been agreed upon.”
This statement — which is premature, at best — was picked up on media agencies like the National Post and turned into a headline.
ARI concluded that, according to their polling, “a majority of Canadians (63%) and Indigenous people (56%) hold the view that further evidence through exhumation is necessary to accept that the remains of children are buried at the site.”
The report also says a “majority” of Canadians say that the “criminalization” of “professors, high school teachers, lawyers and politicians [who] have been fired or forced to resign after questioning the conclusions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is “unfair.”
If true, and most Canadians really do need to see the bodies of children to believe children were buried in unmarked graves at residential schools, then this is a country with some pretty gross desires.
And, according to these three polling announcements (all three were based on results from the same survey group), Canadians have strong opinions surrounding the finances in Indigenous governments, the Indigenous policy choices of Justin Trudeau, and a suspicion surrounding the integrity of Indigenous leaders, residential school survivors, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
ARI has polled and made grandiose conclusions on Indigenous issues for years.
Take, for example, an October 2023 Angus Reid poll which stated that “two in five” Canadians did not believe colonialism was “still a problem” in the country.
Or, there was a 2018 ARI poll which said that the majority of Canadians thought then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau was paying “too much” attention to Indigenous issues.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Coincidentally, these ARI polls also reflect the personal political views of the polling firm’s founder, Angus Reid.
In October 2024, Reid posted a series of angry statements on the platform X, criticizing Trudeau and his support of the claims of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépem First Nation.
Reid also criticized activists who took their frustration out on churches and complained at the hate he received as a result.
“These folks became very angry when I shared my personal outrage over the church burnings that has reached epidemic proportions since Trudeau’s photo shot with the Teddy bear up in Kamloops,” Reid posted. “Turns out we still don’t know what is buried there.”
Reid then posted a video full of lies about Trudeau and residential schools, but — after considerable criticism — deleted it.
“I didn’t realize I was tweeting doctored images,” Reid claimed, later erasing his social media accounts.
The point is both Angus Reid and ARI seem to publish pretty political and subjective conclusions surrounding Indigenous Peoples.
Maybe it’s better to just point out that Sept. 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, arguably the most important day of the year when Indigenous Peoples and Canadians commit to working, living and learning together.
I wonder if the impact of that day has ever been polled by Angus Reid.
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