Vote Compass: some favour sharing the wealth with First Nations

Sharing Saskatchewan's resource wealth with First Nations has been a political hot potato in the province, but many continue to support the idea, Vote Compass says.

Neither the Saskatchewan Partynor the New Democratscurrently support sharing provincial revenue from things like oil and gas with First Nations.

Resource revenue sharingwas a major plank in the NDP's platform in the 2011provincial election, but more recently party leaderCam Broten saidthe idea didn't work for him or the provinceandwouldnot be back.

But the idea isn't dead yet, at least among NDP supporters,according to information collectedfrom Vote Compass,which is CBC News' civic engagement application.

"With regard to resource revenue sharing, the NDP seems to be at odds with its supporters, a majority (62 per cent) of whom agree that the provincial government should share its resource revenues with First Nations,"said Gregory Kerr, research manager with Vox Pop Labs, which created Vote Compass for CBC News.

"This is in stark contrast to Saskatchewan Party supporters, 67% of whom oppose such measures."

Some 7,109respondents have participated from March 7 to 17in Vote Compass.

With regard to resource revenue sharing, the NDP seems to be at odds with its supporters.- Gregory Kerr, Vox Pop Labs

The online tool lets people find out where they fit in on the political landscape in relation to the Saskatchewan Party, the New Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

It also lets the public weigh in on issues that could come up during the campaign. The economy andhealth care have proven to be the two issues the public caresabout the most.

The latest report from Vox Pop Labs asked the public about First Nationsissues.

• Vox Pop Labs Report: First Nations Issues

New Democrats, Sask. Party supporters at opposite poles

When it comes to the question of sharing provincial resource revenues with First Nations, 48 per cent of people said they are opposed, while 34 per cent said they are in favour.

The restsaid they were neutral on the issue or didn't know.

Some 43 per cent of Sask. Party supporters said they are "strongly opposed" to the idea of resource revenue sharing.

Many support more provincial support for First Nations schools

On a different First Nations-relatedquestion asking how much the provincialgovernment should be spending on reserve schools, there was generally support for more money.

Forty per cent said more, 37 per cent said about the same and 19 per cent said less. Another 3per cent said they didn't know.

As with the question about resource sharing, there were polarized views depending on party affiliation.

Sask, Party supporters 48 per cent of themtended to support the "about the same" option, while the other parties generally wanted to see more school spending.

Liberal Party supporters were most likely to support the Saskatchewan governmentspending more on reserve schools.

Kerrsaid support for First Nations school spending tended to mirror what theindividual's favoured party supported.

"A majority of Liberal, Green, and NDP supporters want the provincial government to increase its funding of schools on First Nations reserves, while the bulk of Saskatchewan Party supporters are happy with the status quo preferences that in each case reflect the positions adopted by the parties."

Saskatchewan voters go to the polls on April 4.

About Vote Compass

Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, VoteCompass is a civic engagement application offered in Canada exclusively by CBCNews. The findings are based on 7,109respondents who participated in VoteCompass from March 7 to March 17, 2016. Unlike online opinion polls, respondentsto Vote Compass are not pre-selected.

Similar to opinion polls, however,the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weightedin order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data havebeen weighted by geography, gender, age, educational attainment, occupation,and religion to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actualpopulation of Saskatchewan according to census data and other populationestimates.