More than a third of Canadians are not bothered by family members or friends being unvaccinated, a new poll shows.
The new Leger survey commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) reveals that nearly 40% of the population knows somebody on a personal level who remains unvaccinated.
The majority of that segment, numbering in at 70%, have stopped discussing the issue with them.
Broken down even further, 35% say that being unvaccinated “is not an issue” and that they are fine with the personal choices of their relatives and peers. Meanwhile, 50% stated that they have simply stopped trying to persuade the unvaccinated to get the COVID-19 shot.
“It’s better to take a softer approach,” ACS CEO Jack Jedwab told the Canadian Press. “There’s not tremendous value in taking a hardline approach.”
The survey was conducted between Dec. 3 and Dec. 5 and included 1,500 Canadians.
Regionally, Canadians from Saskatchewan and Manitoba scored the highest when it comes to having unvaccinated relatives or friends.
Those from Atlantic Canada were most likely to terminate relationships over vaccination status, while Canadians from Quebec were more likely to try to persuade their peers to get the vaccine.
Residents from the Prairies were the most likely to answer that “it’s fine” for their friends and family to remain unvaccinated.
As of Dec. 13, government data shows that over 76% of Canadians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Based on current population estimates, this means that nearly 10 million Canadians remain unvaccinated.
Unvaccinated Canadians face a number of restrictions including not being able to board a plane or a train. As exclusively reported by True North, there are only nine other countries with more restrictive COVID-19 measures than Canada. Authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia and Iran were all found to have more permissive social and medical policies.
