Half of all Canadians support missionPublished: Wednesday, 18 July, 2007, 01:56 AM Doha Time
MONTREAL: Half of all Canadians are still behind their government’s military mission in Afghanistan, despite the death of six of their troops there earlier this month and 22 this year, a survey published Monday said.
In the Ipsos-Reid Institute poll, 23% of the 1,002 people surveyed July 10-12 were strongly in favour of Canada’s mission in southern Afghanistan, and 27 % were somewhat supportive.
Canadians’ overall support dropped slightly from an April poll that found 52% in favour of the mission, according to the survey commissioned by the CanWest media group.
Support for Canada’s mission in Afghanistan peaked at 57 % in October 26, and has been dropping ever since.
On July 4, six Canadian soldiers and one Afghan interpreter were killed when a bomb destroyed their vehicle about 20km southwest of Kandahar City. It was Canada’s highest single-day toll in Afghanistan since 2002.
The day after, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reissued a vow he made a month earlier not to withdraw Canada’s military mission from Afghanistan before February 2009, under its commitment to Nato. The opinion poll found that in French-speaking Quebec province a 65% majority opposed Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, against 30 % who supported it. Quebec is due to send 2,000 troops to Afghanistan to relieve their English-speaking comrades.
66 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, 22 of them so far this year.–AFP
Intrestingly, I pulled this from the Gulf Times Doha Quatar a couple of minutes ago.http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=161600&version=1&template_id=41&parent_id=23