Watch above: Eric Sorensen takes a look at how well Canadians know Canada.
TORONTO – How well do you know the basic make-up of Canada’s population?
Think you know what percentage of people are over 65 years of age? What about how many are Christian? Or Muslim?
Take the interactive test here to see how you score
A new Ipsos Reid poll suggests that of all of the socio-demographic facts “guestimated,” Canadians got all of them either wrong or without a majority finding the given fact to be true.
Canada ranked seventh out of 14 countries for ignorance; see which socio-economic factors had the biggest gaps below.
Senior vice president of Ipsos Global John Wright said that compared to other countries’ grasp of their own population make-up, we’re “middle of the pack” and cautioned the erroneous perceptions could have negative effects on debate.
“You look at questions of immigration—especially nowadays with respect to different religious groups and other matters—and if they don’t have a fundamental grasp on what’s in their country, they’re kind of debating things up in the air,” he said.
Respondents over-estimated that 34.6 per cent of the population are immigrants, when the real figure is 21 per cent—a percentage gap of -13.6 points. Canadians also overestimated the proportion of Muslims in Canada—thinking it’s 20.2 per cent Muslim when it’s only 2 per cent.
Those polled also over-estimated the aging population: The average estimate was that 39.2 per cent of the population is over 65 years of age, when it’s actually only 14 per cent.
“The only thing that Canadians seem to get better than most is the sense that their crime rate in fact is falling,” said Wright.
“The United States equally is close to that, where the majority of them say that their crime rate is rising.”
Wright said our southern neighbours ranked 13 out of 14 in terms of getting perceptions wrong—so it appears we’re a bit better off.
“They’re a superpower, and their view of their own society is portrayed around the world, in many respects. If they’re getting 13 out of 14 perceptions wrong, and we’re only getting eight wrong, maybe we’ve got a more balanced view of what the world should look like.”
Wright pointed to Canada’s growing population as a reason Canadians are out of touch with the facts of our population; he said all the other G8 countries’ populations are declining.
“So a lot of this has to do with ingesting new people and not recognizing the changing dynamic of our own demographics in a socioeconomic outlook,” he said.
But Wright cautioned against the inaccuracies; not only in terms of informed debate but also in terms of Canada’s economy.
“If you’re missing out on some of this granular information—whether it be different ethnic groups or aging population or a series of other things—it’s not just your understanding of the country; it’s consumers, it’s business people, it’s citizens. And you better be making some right decisions now because all of a sudden you may find yourself out of business with the wrong perception.”
From Ipsos: For Canada, all facts are from Statistics Canada data. The survey was done online using the Ipsos international respondent panel system. Rankings of the countries were then performed based on levels of accuracy to the verified facts versus the perceptions of each country population.
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