More than half of all Canadians support the protesters who disrupted Kinder Morgan’s work on Burnaby Mountain last month, but a majority also believe the company’s Trans Mountain pipeline will be finished despite such civil disobedience, according to a new online national survey.
Fifty-seven per cent of respondents to a recent Angus Reid Institute survey voiced their approval of the protests, but at the same time, almost as many (51 per cent) said they wanted the expansion of the pipeline carrying oil from Alberta to Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby terminal.
British Columbians were 46 per cent in favour of the expansion and 54 per cent in favour of the protesters trying to stop it. Not surprisingly, the strongest support in the country came from Alberta, where 70 per cent of respondents wanted the pipeline to expand.
The Trans Mountain expansion found support from more than half of respondents from the Prairies and Atlantic Canada, while Ontario respondents were split evenly on the matter and 65 per cent of Quebeckers said they were against it.
Even if it’s slowed down by protests, the vast majority (88 per cent) said they thought the pipeline project would go ahead.
The pollster’s survey was conducted online from Nov. 25-28 among 1504 randomly selected Canadian adults who are members of its opinion panel group. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent 19 times out of 20, according to the pollster.
