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Forty-four per cent of respondents said the statue should be moved to a museum with information about its history and 37 per cent said it should be placed back in its original spot at city hall. Just 13 per cent said it should be moved another location in the city, with six per cent arguing that it should never be displayed publicly again.

Shachi Kurl, the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, said the numbers are consistent with recent polling that shows Canadians are heavily in favour of “contextualization,” but reject the idea of removing such statues altogether.

Photo by Chad Hipolito/National Post/File

One place there is broad agreement, though, is among past supporters of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Eighty-one per cent of those who voted for the Conservatives in 2015 oppose the statue’s removal in the first place — and, in fact, some 47 per cent of those who voted Liberal in 2015 agree with them, compared to 33 per cent who supported the statue’s removal. With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau having mostly steered clear of the issue so far, the statue issue may provide a line of attack for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer as the country heads toward an election in 2019.

Scheer raised the issue at his party’s policy convention in Halifax last month and Conservatives have been sounding off about it across the country Victoria city council’s decision. In Ontario, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government offered to take the statue from Victoria and give the statue a good home in Toronto — an offer that was quickly rejected. Alberta United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney shot a video outside a junior high school named for Macdonald decrying what he called a movement to “erase our history.”