Focus our study

Personally, I do not mind if the question is phrased with other countries and how much they spend on their defense as a percentage of GDP, if you and Jacqueline like it I'm good with it. Do you think it might be more effective, however, instead of asking our defense spending and having the stats of other countries, we should instead put up Canada's budget for defense relative to what else we spend our money on in our budget. For example, instead of saying this country spends 5.4% and this country 18.4% for example, we could say that Canada spends 6.3% of its budget on the military and 5.0% on education, 15% on the economic stimulus package etc....

I think this might be more effective because although Canada spends 6.3 on defense in our budget, it should be relative to what else we spend in our budget despite what other countries might spend on theirs. Asking Canadians if we should spend more on defense by giving the numbers of other countries should not be based on how much other countries spend, it should be relative to what Canada is currently spending in our budget.

Looking at the question Nadeem posed (which I actually quite like), asks if Canada should spend more by looking at other countries figures, and asking respondents if on this information should Canada increase its military budget. But it would be more effective to give the figures of what Canada currently spends on its budget to see if respondents actually value increasing the military budget. Sure, Canadians may feel it is good or not good to increase military spending, but the way the question is phrased does not get at the heart of what the question is trying to ask. It may not be politically feasible to increase our budget on military because the population values more money being put into the economic stimulus package or education or even health care

To truly see if Canadians want to increase the budget for the military we need to ask it in a way that is relative to the other things we spend money on, not how much other counties spend on theirs. If we ask how much we should spend on the military relative to education, health care etc... we can see if the population truly wants to increase the money spent on the budget, and if they truly value doing so.

But if there is a majority on the original question, I have little problems with it.