Slim majority of Canadians want to stick to tips: survey

There’s been a lot of controversy since Earls restaurants announced it would be getting rid of tips in Calgary, and putting a 16 per cent hospitality charge in place.

But while the majority of Canadians are in favour of sticking to tradition, a new survey finds it’s a small majority.

The Angus Reid poll says 46 per cent of Canadians want to keep the current tipping model, and 40 per cent are in favour of change.

Thirteen per cent had no real preference.

“There’s one area of consensus, and that’s that people do see the wages that servers and people working in the hospitality industry are paid as really too low, and they see tipping as a way to artificially mask the underpay in those sectors,” Angus Reid Executive Director Shachi Kurl said.

Three in five Canadians say leaving behind gratuities is no longer about a job well done.

“The philosophy behind tipping was at one point traditionally about leaving a little extra behind, a little gift behind to recognize a job well done. That’s no longer the case,” she said. “Only one in ten of us say that we are changing up how much we tip based on service on a regular basis.”

Kurl says experience may drive whether the country will embrace something over the long term, or leave it alone.

“This isn’t something Canadians have really had a great deal of everyday experience with, and so we would have to see, for example, what happens with the pilot project in Calgary, and really in other areas, before we can really gage a sense of where the true crux of Canadians stand,” Kurl said.

Click here to read the full survey.