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Yes. 2016 sucked: poll

Zika, Hurricane Matthew, Italian earthquakes, and the Fort McMurray fire were some of 2016's low points. Photos from Getty Images
Zika, Hurricane Matthew, Italian earthquakes, and the Fort McMurray fire were some of 2016’s low points. Photos from Getty Images

Most Canadians are not sorry to see the back end of 2016, according to a new poll.

It was the year of Aleppo, the U.S. election, the refugee crisis, terror attacks around the world and an uncertain economy.

We lost David Bowie, Prince, Harper Lee, Muhammad Ali, Gordie Howe, Elie Wiesel, W.P. Kinsella, Gene Wilder and Leonard Cohen, among others. And the survey was conducted before we said goodbye to Alan Thicke, Carrie Fisher, John Glenn and George Michael.

Sixty-three per cent of Canadians surveyed earlier this month felt it was, indeed, a bad year for the world as a whole.

Even more, 65 per cent, felt it was a bad year for the United States.


“People are really not very happy about 2016,” Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, told Yahoo Canada News.

“This is, not surprisingly, a time of reflection for a lot of people and really what they’re looking back on is a year that they’re not exactly sorry to see go away and get behind them.”

It has not been a good year on the international front, Kurl said.

“In the United States this was a year where Canadians watched, I think to an extent in some shock and dismay, Donald Trump elected president,” she said. “Knowing what we know about the way Canadians would have voted had they had the chance, this is not the candidate they were rooting for.”

The humanitarian crisis in Syria; terror attacks in France, Libya, Belgium, Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan; geopolitical uncertainty and the refugee crisis also coloured Canadians’ view of the year that’s coming to a welcome close.

“The devastation in Aleppo is something that people are equating with the devastation of the Second World War and other mass humanitarian crises and that’s had a huge impact on the mindsets of Canadians as they look at what’s happening in the world,” Kurl said.

At home, the mood was slightly better.

Fifty-three per cent of survey respondents said it was a bad year for their provinces. For Canada as a whole, just 38 per cent said 2016 sucked, though only 25 per cent said it was a good year.

On a personal level, most Canadians said the year was a wash — equally good and bad. The rest were equally split between feeling it was good or bad for them.

Sentiment toward 2016 seems linked to political views and home province, Kurl said.

“I suspect a lot of that has to do with where you live and a little bit around how you vote. If this was the year where the Justin Trudeau Liberals just got to be a little bit too much, if you’re not somebody who supported that party… this may have been something of a grating year,” she said.

“And you see for those who are quite happy with the government we have in Ottawa today, for them they say 2016 was a good year.”

The online survey polled 5,128 members of the Angus Reid Forum, and was conducted Dec. 5 to 12. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.