In Canada, the public policy agenda is shaped by an intense competition of ideas. Rethinking Government assists senior decision makers in the private and public sectors to better understand how individual policy ideas and priorities link together and fit into the overall public opinion context.

Launched in 1994, Rethinking Government has helped to bring a more sophisticated understanding of the changing relationships between public institutions, business and individual citizens. This groundbreaking study has wielded considerable influence in the debate surrounding many of the larger social and economic policy issues, and has become one of the most respected and influential sources of public opinion research in Canada.

The Rethinking Government project has garnered the highest levels of interest and credibility in public policy circles. Some of Canada's leading public policy research organizations, including the Public Policy Forum, Canadian Policy Research Networks and the Canadian Council on Social Development, regularly draw on the project's findings. The project has also shed an unprecedented amount of light on both the cleavages and the points of consensus that exist between the way that elites and average Canadians view the world. The project is devoted to understanding Canadian public opinion, attitudes, behaviour and values as they relate to major public policy issues. Core tracking questions on issues such as government priorities, values for government, personal optimism and security, identity and belonging, and public perceptions of public institutions provide the crucial contextual backdrop against which more specific areas of study (e.g., health care, the environment) are best understood.

Rethinking Government is designed to provide a responsive service to a select set of subscribers. EKOS' methodological approach features leading-edge methods, including the use of randomized trade-off analysis, deliberative focus groups, elite-general public comparative analysis and segmentation analysis. Sponsors benefit from the largest cumulative database assembled on the changing role of government in Canadian society. This database, which is not publicly available, is reserved for the exclusive use of subscribers.

For further information about this year's study contact Andrew Sullivan at asulliva@ekos.com or at (613) 235 7215.