Quote of the Month

Anonymous — April 1984

OTTAWA – A growing fear of nuclear war is driving Canadians to support the US more readily on foreign policy issues, .according to one of the country’s leading pollsters.

Public opinion “is much more pro-US in foreign policy than it has been in the past,” said Allan Gregg, president of Decima Research Ltd. of Toronto. “But the root of that hawkishness is not truculence – if anything, it is a wish that the problem would go away,” he told a meeting of the American Association of Political Consultants March 22. Gregg said that ,an overwhelming number of Canadians – particularly young Canadians – expect to see nuclear war in their lifetime. “They don’t buy the notion of limited nuclear war” he added. “They believe that if they face such a war, it’s total destruction.

The first reaction is to want to do something about the problem, he explained, but the second is to take sides. Given a choice between the US and the Soviet Union, Decima polls. indicate that most Canadians jump to the US.

Decima counts the federal Progressive Conservative party and several major corporations among its clients.

The Peace Calendar

Canadian Disarmament Information Service, 1983-1984

Quote of the Month