The economy and the environment topped the list of concerns for Saskatchewan respondents in the latest Vote Compass report.
CBC’s Vote Compass is a voter engagement tool lets people answer a series of questions to determine where they sit on the political landscape with respect to political parties, as Saskatchewan heads toward a provincial election this month.
Results are not intended to be, and should not be interpreted as, voting advice, nor as a prediction as to which party a given user intends to vote for. It is rather an entry point into a discussion of party positions on a suite of issues relevant to the election.
The canvased parties include the Saskatchewan Party, the NDP and the Progressive Conservative Party.
Respondents were asked the question, “What issue is most important to you in this election?”
Thirty-three per cent of Vote Compass respondents identified the economy as the top issue. That’s down from 49 per cent in 2016.
Concern for the environment came in second, and was flagged as the top issue by 13 per cent of respondents, up from seven per cent in 2016.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic (12 per cent) and health care (11 per cent) were the third and fourth most-often cited top issues.
Saskatchewan Party voters were found to be much more likely to choose the economy as the most important issue, at 51 per cent. Nine per cent of respondents who said they were NDP voters picked the economy as the top issue.
Voter Compass also found that respondents who are NDP voters were much more likely to identify the environment as a concern (22 per cent) than those who identified themselves as Saskatchewan Party voters (eight per cent).
Both women and men cited the economy as the top issue. Health care was the second-most cited issue for female respondents, while for males, it was the environment.
The other issues canvassed, listed in order of importance, were:
Education.
Labour.
Social justice.
Energy.
Social welfare.
Crime.
Transportation.
Indigenous issues.
Government operations.
Telecommunications.
Culture.
Housing.
Other findings from the Sept. 28 to Oct. 1 Vote Compass report:
Female respondents were more likely to vote for the economy and health care than male respondents.
Those in the 50-64 age range were most concerned with the economy.
Respondents in the 18-29 age range were most concerned with the environment.
Saskatchewan voters go to the polls on Oct. 26.
About Vote Compass
Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in Saskatchewan exclusively by CBC/Radio-Canada. The findings are based on 2,302 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from Sept. 28, 2020 to Oct. 1, 2020, who answered the open-text question: “What issue is most important to you in this election?” Responses were aggregated into categories using a natural language processing algorithm.
Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data have been weighted by gender, age, education, household income, region, first language and partisanship to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Saskatchewan according to census data and other population estimates.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
