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Aeroplan apologizes for controversial survey, poll-maker defends 'bold' questions

The Aeroplan rewards program is apologizing over a recent online survey that asked questions on controversial topics, including whether immigration threatens “the purity of the country.”

But the president of the market research firm behind the survey insists that “bold” questions are the best way to capture a person’s true beliefs, and that scrapping those questions would forfeit years of important research tracking the rise and fall of intolerance in Canada.

The survey asked Aeroplan members several questions about shopping and travel, before moving onto questions about their social views. One of the questions asked whether immigration threatened “the purity of the country,” another asked whether fathers should be considered the head of households, and whether traditional marriage was the only way to form a family.

Several users complained about the tone of the questions on Twitter, prompting Aeroplan to respond that it would be deleting all of the data collected from the poll.

“This survey in no way reflects our opinions or values,” the company said. “We apologize for sending it out and will be deleting all of the data collected from it.”

Aeroplan's owner, Aimia, said in an email to CTV News that the company should have reviewed the questionnaire more thoroughly before distributing it.

“We apologize to any members who were offended by the questions in the survey, which we had not properly reviewed internally,” Aimia’s senior director of communications Christa Poole wrote.

“After looking into it, we found there are aspects of the survey that don’t meet the standards we hold ourselves to in terms of the kind of information we gather in order to provide the best program for our members.”

She reiterated that data collected from Aeroplan members through the survey will be deleted. They have also asked their research partner, Montreal-based market research firm CROP, to do the same.

Gauging intolerance in Canada

But, in an interview with CTV News, CROP president Alain Giguère stood behind the polling methods.

Giguère called the situation “sad” and said the intention was not to offend anyone. He said major brands across Canada have used the 12-minute survey for more than 20 years in hopes of better understanding their customers.

The goal of the survey was to accurately capture “the basic fundamental values of people,” and the best way to do that, Giguère said, is by asking what he called “bold” questions.

“For instance, one of the questions that has been shocking … is when we say ‘There’s too much immigration. It threatens the purity of the country.’ I agree that the statement is awful. But you know, 43 per cent of Canadians agree with such an item,” Giguère said.

“So if you agree to a very bold question like this, I know that you’re intolerant.”

On the flip side, soft-ball questions could encourage survey-takers to moderate their more radical opinions -- thereby creating inaccuracies.

“Let’s say, if you’re too nice in your question, if you ask something like, I don’t know, ‘Immigrants contribute marvelously well to the wealth of the country’ and so on, sometimes when you’re too nice we get as answers what we call socially acceptable answers,” Giguère explained.

“People try to be nice with the interview. They want to look nice. If you ask a very bold question and you get people who say they agree with a very bold question -- now you got it. You got the real person.”

Even if some questions seem reprehensible, Giguère suggested it would not be useful to ditch the approach.

“We’ve been tracking this over the last 20 years with the same questions. You change the wording, you can’t go on tracking,” he said.

The divisive immigration question was actually inspired by a real-life interaction. Giguère said that, many years ago, he was moderating a focus group when someone expressed how they felt about immigrants coming to Canada.

“I had someone who told me this word by word: ‘There is too much immigration, it threatens the purity of the country,’ he recalled.

The next day, he added the question to the survey.

Social media backlash

As for the controversy, Giguère blamed social media and the way people approach a situation when they’re offended. Before Facebook, a disgruntled customer upset about the question would have called Aeroplan, and the company’s public-relations team would’ve redirected the customer to the survey company, Giguère said.

“I would’ve called this woman, I would have explained to her why we do that -- that’s it. And this woman, this is not what she did. I mean, she went on Facebook, on Twitter. That’s it. It’s a sad story.”

Lacey Willmott, a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, complained about the survey in a tweet to Aeroplan last week and asked the company why it was supporting “homophobia, misogyny, populism and anti-immigration.”

The next day, Aeroplan responded on Twitter by thanking Willmott and said it had followed up with its vendor.

In an interview with CTV News Channel, Willmott said the question about immigration and “the purity of the country” upset her most. It also got her thinking about why Aeroplan wanted that information in the first place.

“I was definitely very shocked and I was frustrated and, more than anything, I was wondering, why is Aeroplan asking this question, and what are they collecting this data for?”

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which information from millions of Facebook users was improperly obtained by a firm connected to U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign, Willmott said she’s concerned about what Aeroplan is doing with the data.

After Willmott’s tweet, Aeroplan’s vice-president of marketing reached out to personally assure her that the data was being deleted.

“He said the data would be deleted and they wouldn’t ask those questions any further,” Willmott said.

Aeroplan accused of 'insensitivity'

Since the story broke, Twitter users accused the company of “insensitivity,” “a lack of awareness,” and one described the survey as “sinister.”

Among those detractors was Toronto city councilor Mike Layton, who called the questions “stupid” and said “language is important.”

“How questions are asked can often shape answers but more damaging - shape people’s perspectives. Did you ask about households with parents sharing responsibility? About how our society is made more prosperous by welcoming people from other countries?” Layton tweeted.

Aimia’s senior director of communications called the survey “a proprietary longitudinal research survey” conducted by CROP over the past 30 years to measure social change, with the results cited by multiple Canadian media outlets.

Last year, in a blog post on the CROP website, Giguère noted that the question about “the father of the family must be master in his own house” is one of their “favourite” questions and one they have asked for years to gauge changes in attitude about the family unit.

The first year CROP measured this statement, in 1983, 42 per cent of Canadians agreed with the statement. That dropped to 19 per cent in 2003, but has since risen again to 29 per cent.

 

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