Most Canadians OK with Occupiers

Poll of the day: Those that know about the Occupy protests tend to support them.

Those scraggly protesters in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Toronto's St. James Park, and Ottawa's Confederation Park have occupied the hearts and minds of Canadians, according to a new poll. Nanos Research finds that seven out of 10 respondents knew about the protests, and of those, 58 per cent of people held a favourable or somewhat favourable opinion of the movement, just as the Vancouver and Victoria served notices calling on the protest camps to disband. Among people younger than 30, that support rises to 73 per cent, while the olds are split right down the middle – 34 per cent of people older than 60 said they held favourable views of the protests, while 32 per cent said just the opposite. Support remained highest for the movement in (surprise, surprise) Quebec and British Columbia, while the Prairies don't seem to take to kindly to these hippy folk. Granted, the poll was taken last month, before a woman died of a heroin overdose at the Vancouver site, so it's not certain whether these numbers would hold up today. The Canadian incarnation of the Occupy movement will turn one month old a week today.