Residents are abuzz about a telephone survey asking locals how they feel about their municipality's politics, and who they would vote for in the 2008 election.
The poll asks voters who they would cast their mayoral ballot for in the next election, specifically narrowing the field to councillors Corinne Lonsdale, Patricia Heintzman, Greg Gardner and Mayor Ian Sutherland.
The Nordic Research Group (NRG), a Winnipeg firm with offices in Vancouver, launched the political survey this week, but the question on locals' minds is who commission it and why?
"Because of confidentially issues I can't disclose who commissioned the report," said Shahrokh Khorran, director for NRG's Vancouver office.
"But I can say it wasn't commissioned by the district."
However the content of the poll is typically commissioned by a certain clientele, he said.
"We do this research for a variety of reasons," he said. "We do this for politicians when they want to get re-elected and see what the issues are in the community. Businesses looking to move into a community also commission these types of opinion polls."Gardner, said he had no involvement in the poll.
"I have no idea who brought this forward. It was not commissioned by me," said Gardner, noting that he had received a number of questions about the survey from constituents. "[They] were wondering who was doing this."
Heintzman also said she was unaware of the poll's origins and Lonsdale was unavailable by press time.
Sutherland also said he didn't commission the survey and didn't know who had.
"There are surveys going on in the community all the time," said Sutherland. "I know they get done by developers, they get done by various people for all sorts of reasons."
樱桃视频Nation did a survey of its own in the area six months ago, said Sutherland without going into details on the content of that poll.
Beyond asking respondents who they would choose for mayor, the survey also asks residents to rate the job performance of each individual elected official.
"We ask whether people think they are doing well overall, and if so what it is they're doing well," said Khorran. "And we ask whether they think they are doing poorly overall, and if so what specifically they are doing poorly.
