Regulators or resource companies – professors or environmental groups. Who do you suppose has the most credibility with the public?
For the past several months, Resource Works has been running this survey about resource attitudes on our website. Although we don't consider it to be a scientific poll, we do hope it can be a tool that helps us understand broad trends in public opinion.
The idea was to learn more about how people form trust in various sources of information relating to the natural resource economy.
The results we got were quite insightful, pointing among other things to an apparently high level of trust in federal and provincial regulations. Other institutions and information sources did not far so well.
Who do you trust the most to give you information on natural resource development?
Government, industry professionals, environmentalists and the news media are going to have a harder time gaining trust when it comes to providing the public with unbiased information in relation to the resource industry.
This result provides new evidence and increased optimism about the mission of Resource Works. Building crucial middle ground talk, based on mutual respect, is vitally important in 2016.