"The Montreal Gazette, in an obvious attempt to profit from the gun control controversy, used blatantly biased questioning in their recent Ipsos Reid poll. The questions, submitted with no input or consultation with Ipsos Reid, were worded in such a way as to take advantage of the general public's lack of knowledge on firearms technical details" said Tony Bernardo, Executive Director of the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action.

John Wright, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for Ipsos Reid stated, "All I can say is that this is the first time I can recall doing a poll like we did: The Montreal Gazette asked the polling firm Leger to poll Quebec on the topic...they wrote the questions and did the poll and then we received the exact translations from our client, CanWest, who asked to run them, as is, in the rest of Canada. So, we had no involvement and influence on them except the data collection itself and a corresponding write up."

Mr. Bernardo went on to say, "The poll suggests that the vast majority of those in Quebec and a lesser majority in the rest of the country, want all semi-auto firearms banned. However, the questions used to come to that conclusion were misleading, contained false information and were obviously designed to produce pre-calculated responses."

"As an example of the misleading information contained in the poll questions, the first question states, 'it (semi-automatic firearms) is a restricted weapon in Canada, meaning it can be obtained only for target practice...' This statement overlooks the fact that over 75% of semi auto (or self-loading) firearms are non-restricted and are commonly used for hunting. The wording of the preamble also suggests that semi-auto firearms are, in fact, fully automatic in function; again, false and misleading."

"This type of sensational journalism contributes nothing to an already emotion filled debate and only serves to mislead and confuse the issue. It is biased and irresponsible journalism at its worst and far below the standards Canadians expect from respectable media outlets like the Montreal Gazette."

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