Poll: Canadians don't oppose higher taxes

The Toronto Star:

Ottawa — A new poll challenges conventional political wisdom by showing a majority of Canadians — including most Conservative voters and wealthy individuals — would support higher taxes to fight income inequality.

Higher taxes are supposedly political dynamite but the poll — the first major survey for the newly founded left-leaning Broadbent Institute — suggests the toxicity of taxation has been exaggerated and is the product of a concerted “ideological” campaign, says Ed Broadbent, the institute’s namesake.

A telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians by Environics Research asked about attitudes toward growing income inequality and the role of government and individuals in addressing it.

After canvassing whether respondents see inequality as a real problem, and whether the rich should pay more, it asked directly if people would “personally be very, somewhat, not very or not at all willing to pay slightly higher taxes if that’s what it would take to protect our social programs like health care, pensions and access to post-secondary education.”

Surprisingly, it found a majority of support across gender, ages, education levels, family income and employment levels, and in most regions.

It said even a majority of Conservative voters (58 per cent) are somewhat willing to pay higher taxes to protect social programs, while Liberal and NDP voters are more supportive (72 per cent would pay more.)

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