The flags of the provinces and territories of Canada. Photo: Government of Canada
A new Narrative Research poll has shown Atlantic Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is perceived as the best in the country.
Participants in the survey were asked these two questions;
- Which province or territory in Canada do you think has done the best job at managing the COVID-19 pandemic?
- Which province or territory in Canada do you think has done the worst job at managing the COVID-19 pandemic?
Looking at the positive responses Atlantic Canada fared the best with 24 per cent of the 1,200 respondents ranking it as having had the best pandemic response.
British Columbia was viewed to have the second-best response with 14 per cent ranking it as the region with the best response.
Narrative Research CEO Margaret Brigley says those two provinces are perceived to have done well due to their relatively low case numbers.
Ontario and Quebec both fared the worst in the survey with 57 per cent of respondents ranking one of those two provinces as having the worst response.
Even with Ontario and Quebec experiencing significantly more cases than other regions of the country some people said they’ve had the best response.
Ontario has had the best response to the pandemic in the opinion of eight per cent of survey participants while six per cent selected Quebec.
Brigley says that is likely influenced by a home-province bias, “People tend to think that wherever they are from is where the pandemic has been handled the best.”
She says that is likely because people are more familiar with the situation close to home and they often don’t pay attention to news outside of their region.
The two other regions the survey looked at were the Prairies and the Territories. Both were ranked in the middle of the road with only small percentages saying they’ve had the best or worst response.
You can see the full results of Narrative Research’s survey on their website.
