With dozens of all-candidates debates planned across Canada next Thursday — each set to focus on environmental issues — a new poll from Mainstreet Research suggests that 60 per cent of Canadians would be less likely to vote for a candidate that skipped a local debate on climate issues.

Environmental issues were forecast to be a major issue in this fall’s election, and have emerged so far on the campaign trail as a dominant subject. Parties have been sparring over whose plan will most effectively steer Canada towards success with its Paris Agreement targets for emissions reduction — and if those targets should be re-assessed — and debating the merits of contentious measures like carbon taxing.

READ MORE: Carbon pricing and climate pledges, explained: a look at where the parties stand

The Liberal Party made a bevy of environment-related promises on Tuesday alone, including a detail-thin vow to ensure Canada reached net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The NDP, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that they would establish a national “climate bank” to help provinces interconnect power grids to distribute clean electricity.

The announcements came on the heels of the United Nations’ 2019 Climate Action Summit, which took place in New York, and resulted on Monday in 65 countries worldwide, plus the European Union, committing to net-zero emissions targets by 2050.

Mainstreet’s new poll did not focus on party leaders’ potential attendance at national debates, but rather, the attendance of candidates in respondents’ local communities, and their perception if those local candidates skipped a non-partisan, all-candidates debate that focused on the environment. Thirty-six per cent of respondents to Mainstreet’s new poll said they’d be “much less likely” to vote for someone that skipped an all-candidates environmental debate, and 24 per cent said they would be “somewhat less likely.”

Fifty-one per cent of respondents told Mainstreet that, in such a situation, they would see the missing candidate as “out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Canadians.”

Mainstreet’s poll was conducted over two days in early September, and surveyed 1,876 Canadians. The poll was sponsored by GreenPAC, which describes itself as a non-partisan organization focused on “environmental leadership in politics.” Mainstreet assesses its margin of error for the poll to be plus or minus 2.26 per cent, at the 95 per cent confidence level. (Margins of error are higher in each subsample of the population, they cautioned.)

In addition to measuring Canadians’ responses to potential candidate absences from debates, the poll also quantified the weight of climate issues for voters in the coming election. Climate change and the environment were found to be “very important” to 48 per cent of respondents when deciding on their vote, and “important” to 29 per cent. Just nine per cent of respondents said the issues were “not at all important” to their voting decision.

The issue was found to be most important among women, and among individuals aged 65 and older — 56.8 per cent of women identified the issue as “very important,” versus 39.3 per cent of men; 54.5 per cent of individuals aged 65 or older identified the issue as “very important” compared to 44.9 per cent of individuals aged 50 to 64, 45.2 per cent of individuals aged 35 to 49, and 50.1 per cent of individuals aged 18 to 34.

Alberta had the lowest percentage of surveyed individuals identifying the issue as “very important,” at 27.8 per cent, and the highest percentage of individuals saying the issue was “not at all important,” at 20.3 per cent. Atlantic Canada, meanwhile, had the highest percentage of individuals seeing the environment as “very important,” at 58.4 per cent, and the lowest percentage of those responding that the issue was “not at all important” to their voting decisions, at 2.4 per cent.

READ MORE: Organizers for 100 local environment debates move date due to leaders’ event

Quebec, meanwhile, had the highest percentage of voters saying they’d be “much less likely” to vote for a candidate who skipped an all-candidates climate debate in their riding, with 42.8 per cent saying so. Alberta had the lowest percentage of respondents in that category, totalling 25.2 per cent.