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Photo by Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The responses show an explosion in the “very dissatisfied” category, which was negligible in 2015. In 2017, 32 per cent were very dissatisfied with the organization of events, while 18 per cent were very dissatisfied with the overall event.

It also shows significant drops in the number of people agreeing that the show made them proud to be Canadian and that they felt more connected to the country’s capital.

The survey by Quorus Consulting was conducted in two phases, with face-to-face interviews on site and then follow-up questions online. 1,534 people aged 16 or over participated in the interviews, and 679 subsequently completed the online surveys.

Of those who completed the survey, 60 per cent had travelled to Ottawa for the occasion and, of the travellers, 92 per cent were from elsewhere in Canada.

The event was plagued by enormous security lineups, and stories emerged of people who joined a line to access Parliament Hill early in the morning and were still in line by mid-afternoon with no end in sight. Some stood in line for hours only to discover it was a “false line,” and they had wasted their whole morning.

Photo by National Post

Through an access-to-information request in September, the Ottawa Citizen received a trove of angry letters written to Canadian Heritage from people who had attended. “We waited five and a half hours in the rain,” said one.

“Thousands lined up for hours and never got to set foot on Parliament Hill. Why were there lines going nowhere?” said another who had travelled from Alberta.