Association For Canadian Studies: Organized Religion

Marc Ouellet Dept: The nationwide poll commissioned by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies shows that the sense of attachment to religion among Quebec residents has edged upwards in the past two years, even as it appears to have waned in several other parts of the country most noticeably in Alberta, according to Montreal Gazette. Nationally, 36 per cent of Canadians stated in the November survey that they consider themselves very or somewhat attached to religion. That s marginally down from the 39 per cent recorded in an ACS survey conducted about two years earlier, in September 2010 and amid speculation that Quebec-born Cardinal Marc Ouellet could become the next pope and the first ever non-European cleric to lead the world s one billion Catholics a recent survey of Canadians attitudes toward organized religion suggests the long-standing postwar antipathy felt by many Quebeckers towards the church that gave rise to Ouellet may have finally bottomed out. The effect of the shift is that regional differences in the reported depth of Canadians faith are now near insignificant, with just a little over one-third of the population fairly consistently across the country expressing a degree of attachment to religion. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.