Is the concept of "not in my backyard" really a factor in the controversy over the proposed women's recovery centre in the former Haldi Road school or are the biggest problems with the way the city handled the application?
Using a public opinion poll, a class of UNBC political science students are attempting to find out what the residents of Prince George really think about the debate over the potential Leslie Road facility with a public opinion poll.
The poll is part of a large class project for the third-year class and residents can expect to see students fanned out across the city for 10 days, beginning Feb. 18, asking for their input.
The survey is completely student run, from the selection of the topic to the analysis of the data.
"We chose it because we wanted something that had a high level of engagement with the community and that would stimulate debate amongst them and get some actual attention for our study," said Clinton Priestley.
Locking on to a recent issue that's fresh in the public's mind should also help stimulate engagement, said classmate Kelley Ware.
While they won't be able to reach the more rural areas of the city, due to their transportation limitations, students are expecting to set up at locations in the Hart and College Heights that would be hit by residents living further out.
"These are key centres that people who do live outside of [town] would need to come into town for," said Corrine Brosz. "[That way] we get the people who live in [the area] and people who come in on weekends."
The class, led by Jason Morris, is a hands-on approach to public policy and students are required to complete a poll every year. Last year's batch created a survey gauging community support for supervised injection sites.
Although it's not a UNBC research project, the students were all cleared by the school's research ethics board to conduct the survey. Over the 10 days of polling, the class is hoping collect between 380 and 400 responses.
The Canadian Politics and Policy class has also been in contact with the neighbours of the potential Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women, who Priestley said are looking forward to the results.
"I can see why, too," said Ware, noting most of the vocal response to the centre has come from extremely polarized views in the form of letters and opinions pieces in newspapers.
The potential for the results - which will be released March 14 - to have larger implications is attractive to the students.
"It could potentially give city hall an insight into why this project was met with such opposition and if it is because of the implementation and the lack of consultation, if they propose a new venture they might be able to to realize this is what didn't work before, this is why it didn't work before and be able to fix that so these problems won't exist in the future," Ware said.
