The UnCanadian Post Massages Missile Defence Again
Uncategorized Comments (0)
By Roy Whyte
Feb18 2003
Canadian patriot and nationalist Mel Hurtig has uncovered more half-truths and blatant misrepresentations of poll statistics as published by the National Post. The poll in question ran in the February 11 2004 edition.
The poll was conducted by POLLARA, who is chaired by long-time Liberal pollster Michael Marzolini. While there is nothing wrong with that end, it’s the actual portrayal of the survey as put forward by the Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife in the National Post that needs to be challenged.
You see Robert Fife has taken it upon himself to massage the findings of the poll. The poll in question was around the contentious issue of National Missile Defence or NMD for short. For many months the Federal Liberal Party has been misleading Canadians around the entire subject as they enter into talks with the United States on behalf of all Canadians. Now the National Post has picked up the ball and is continuing the misinformation march.
The story ran with a headline of – “Canadians Want Missile Defence: Poll”, with that the subhead included a tag line of “7 out of 10 in favour”. All sounds pretty cheery and copasetic right? Too bad that was not what was asked in the poll itself!
Mel Hurtig states, “One small problem. No such question was asked in the survey, and no such answers were received. The words “National Missile Defence” appeared nowhere in the questions asked. Nor was there any other reference of any kind to missile defence.” Well, isn’t that a pickle?
Making this even stranger is that in the body of the article in question, the piece states “64% of Canadians favour missile defence”. David, 64% is not 7 out of 10. Its close, but no cigar we are sorry to say.
David Fife on behalf of the National Post has determined without justification that Canadians not only ‘favour’, but also strongly favour joining with the United States into the fiasco known as missile defence. How nice of him to decide for everyone else, then to have the National Post foist it off onto Canadians as some kind of fact.
This is a disturbing turn of events considering the ramifications of NMD and its potential end conclusions for all Canadians. Nearly every other public opinion poll has shown that Canadians do not mind entering into talks with the United States; yet they most certainly do not want to join blindly into any kind of deal.
That sentiment is only strengthened when weapons in space is included as part of NMD, which it is whether some care to admit it or not. The United States government and George Bush in his last state of the union address and budget said that space-based weapons components are indeed part of the NMD plan. Yet we have our national media and members of the House of Commons trying to say otherwise.
Instead of misleading Canadians on the topic of NMD our national media outlets should be doing their utmost to actually educate Canadians about the whole issue. This issue is just too daunting and potentially harmful that we should expect nothing less.
Roy Whyte is the Director of WhiteBark Innovations
and edits Canadian Business News
@ February 18, 2004