. . .  For any upcoming elections.  Seems the pollsters are going to be   
   operating without any oversight - and we all know what happens when there's no   
   oversight for polls, right?     [Trump is not a figment of your imagination]   
   _______________________________   
   CBC News · Posted: Jul 31, 2018   
      
   Canada's polling industry association is shutting down   
      
   Shocking members, Market Research and Intelligence Association says it will   
   wind down by the end of August   
      
   The organization that represents public opinion pollsters and market   
   researchers in Canada is disbanding, leaving the Canadian polling industry   
   without a self-governing oversight body.   
   [- - -]   
   "Yes, was totally surprised," said Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum   
   Research, in an email. "I had no notice that they were facing issues."   
      
   "Total shock," said Anastasia Arabia of Trend Research, who was president of   
   the MRIA from 2013 to 2014. "I've gotten so many emails and phone calls from   
   around the country from members."   
      
   Don Mills, CEO of Corporate Research Associates, said the news "caught   
   everybody completely off guard. It was quite a shock, frankly."   
   [- - -]   
   There were two problems with the MRIA, said Janet Brown, an independent   
   pollster who was commissioned by CBC News to conduct a poll on the political   
   views of Albertans earlier this year.   
      
   "If you were a pollster who didn't care about standards, you didn't join the   
   MRIA," she said. "If you were a pollster who did care, you didn't join because   
   the MRIA didn't enforce its standards."   
      
   A former member of the association, Brown said she left about a dozen years   
   ago after the MRIA failed to sanction a member organization that had been   
   shown to have published falsified data.   
   [- - -]   
   When the MRIA dissolves, Canada will be without a national oversight body for   
   the polling industry — making it a bit of an outlier.  There are a number of   
   international organizations in existence, though both the United States and   
   Great Britain, for    
   example, have their own national associations.   Arabia wonders whether some   
   of the sister organizations of the MRIA in these countries could open a   
   Canadian chapter.   
      
   A new organization might be in the works. A joint statement by Mills and   
   Jean-Marc Léger, president of Léger 360, and signed by five other prominent   
   pollsters, was released later in the day, just hours after the MRIA's closure   
   was announced.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)