Majority of Manitobans want National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to be stat holiday, poll suggests

Three-quarters of Manitobans are in favour of making Sept. 30 — National Day for Truth and Reconciliation — a statutory holiday in Manitoba, a new Probe Research poll commissioned by the Winnipeg Free Press suggests.

Orange Shirt Day, as it's also known, falls on Sept. 30 and was inspired by Phyllis Webstad who, in 1973 at the age of six, was stripped of her new orange shirt on her first day at a residential school in British Columbia.

The first Orange Shirt Day was in 2013 and since then, the federal government and some provinces have made it a statutory holiday, but to date, Manitoba has not.

In summer 2022, Premier Heather Stefanson said her government could make a decision by that fall, but ultimately said they didn't want to rush the development of a new holiday.

She has said the province has been unable to find consensus among Indigenous groups and businesses.

A statutory holiday requires employers to either provide time off or extra pay to employees on that day.

The survey broke down the support into subgroups, including those who live in Winnipeg and those outside of the city, men and women, level of education and income, and political affiliation.

Nearly every subgroup strongly supported the idea, with the level ranging from 52 per cent to 93 per cent.

The lowest support was among people who said they'd vote for the governing Progressive Conservative party. Fifty-two per cent of those who identified as PC supporters backed the idea, compared to 93 per cent of NDP supporters and 85 per cent of Liberal supporters.

The results are from a survey of 1,000 Manitoba adults, done from May 31 to June 13.

The sample consisted of 548 people randomly called and interviewed by a live operator and 452 people reached using robocalls.

A poll with that sample size has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points 95 per cent of the time, Probe said.