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Whether Canada could be facing a similar issue has been a question ever since.

The results of the study suggest 46 per cent of Canadians are open-minded towards the world and each other, with the highest numbers found in B.C. and the Atlantic provinces.

But 30 per cent report feeling economically and culturally insecure, a sentiment found in the largest numbers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The remainder — roughly 25 per cent — have a mixed view.

To gauge where Canadians sit, EKOS Research and The Canadian Press aggregated responses to questions posed in two telephone polls between June and December about people’s perceptions of their economic outlook, class mobility, ethnic fluency and tolerance. Pollsters also asked whether they believed such movements were good or not.

The results were in turn plotted on a spectrum from “open” to “ordered” — a new way of classifying people’s political viewpoints that goes beyond the traditional right-versus-left.

The old partisan markers are driven by fiscal and social philosophies and are less a part of today’s political debate that broader opinions about how the world should be run, said EKOS President Frank Graves.

“The left-right has mutated under these pressures into this ‘ordered-open’ and it brings along some of the traditional left-right, but it brings along a lot of new divisions,” Graves said.

“The questions now are: Do you want to pull up the drawbridge? What do you think about people who don’t have the same skin colour as you? What do you think about the importance of tolerating dissent or having a more-ordered versus a more-chaotic or creative society?”