A new Angus Reid survey suggests British Columbians' opinion of the RCMP has plummeted over the past two years -- and pollsters say the death of Robert Dziekanski is to blame.
Of a national survey polling public confidence in the internal operations and leadership of the Mounties, 57 per cent of Canadians said their opinions had stayed the same since 2007.
But in B.C., 61 per cent of those surveyed said their confidence in the national police force had decreased.
"This is really something that we've never seen before, the level of confidence dropping so dramatically," Angus Reid spokesman Mario Canseco told ctvbc.ca.
Alberta had the second highest number of negative responses at 36 per cent -- roughly half the number of British Columbians who said their confidence had sunk.
Canseco credits the shift to the widely-reported death of Robert Dziekanski and the public inquiry that followed.
"I think it has a lot to do with the stories that have been done about the Dziekanski case, and the way that the story has changed," Canseco said.
"As time has gone by, we've learned that maybe they haven't been as forthcoming as they could have been at the beginning."
Interestingly, the most critical demographic appears to be those aged 55 and older, Canseco said.
"There's this idea that younger people don't have much confidence in the RCMP, but we find out that only 21 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 say that their confidence has decreased."
Comparatively, 45 per cent of those aged 55 and older said they had decreased confidence in the Mounties.
The survey, conducted online on Dec. 17 and 18, polled 1,002 randomly selected Canadians. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
