Poll Anyone?

There seems to be a lot of concern about public opinion polls. You know, the kind which influenced Cadman to vote against a non-confidence motion, Stronach to defect to the Liberals with a nice plum post fit for anyone without political experience and Murphy to attempt to convince Grewal to use them as reasoning to deal in offices to order to affect a decision in a vote.

The Kroll Report documents that the Special Programs & Sponsorship (SPS) funding had various sources within the Government of Canada (GoC) managed by the Liberal Party. According to Kroll, the contracts for SPS were issued for:

1) Sponsorship
2) PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH [my emphasis]
3) Special Projects
4) Advertising
5) Purchasing of Promotional Items

The Government of Canada Budget Process for SPS was funded this way:

1) Public Works and Government Services Canada/Communications Canada - $197 million
via internal transfers - $6 million
2) Unity Reserve - via Canada Information Office (CIO) - $22 million
- via itself - $112 million
3) Other Government Departments - $16.5 million
4) Operating Reserves - $1.5 million

TOTAL: $355 million

$16.5 million of the $1.1 billion in the Government of Canada advertising budget was re-allocated to SPS contracts funnelled by other departments run by the Liberal Party.

Of that $1.1 billion in advertising budget for the GoC Vickers & Bensen had the highest total advertising contracts from the federal government at $277.57 million dollars.

Are these ad agencies who have received public revenue managed by the Liberal Party, involved in these public opinion polls that come out almost everyday telling Canadians what to think?

Years ago I knew that the polls were full of it. If I wasn't called by a well known pollster and asked their less than direct questions that could have had a million ways to respond, I would not have understood that these polls are manipulated and presented to the Canadian public as scientific data.

But, the press and broadcast media seem to love them.