As Parliament resumes today after its holiday recess, MPs will be back at work, not much clearer about what folks outside the Ottawa bubble really expect from them than they were when they left on their break a few days before Christmas.
The opinion polls don’t help a great deal. Broadly interpreted, they paint a picture of a country ready for change, a public tired of the Liberals, but not enthusiastic about the alternatives. If an election had been held when recent surveys were being conducted, voters would have elected a minority Conservative government with about 35 per cent of the popular vote. That’s four to six points more than the Liberals, who are lagging after seven-plus years in office. But would voters really turn to the Tories? Other poll data suggest that while the electorate might accept a Conservative government, they would not necessarily buy a Pierre Poilievre Conservative government.
Popular support for the leaders of both major parties is pathetic. According to last week’s Nanos Research survey, Justin Trudeau remains the preferred choice as prime minister. He may have only 30 per cent of the public with him, but that’s three points better than the Conservative leader. When Nanos asked about the qualities of a good political leader. Fifty per cent said Trudeau has the leadership qualities; 48 per cent said NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has them. Poilievre trailed with 38 per cent, six points ahead of the Green Party’s Elizabeth May.
Some tentative conclusions. Under Poilievre, the Conservatives, by shifting to the right, have consolidated their core vote, but they haven’t expanded it. The Liberals have eaten into their base, but have more room to increase it, because their pool of “accessible voters”– people who would consider voting for them if push comes to shove – is marginally larger than the Conservatives’. The New Democrats have neither prospered nor suffered from last March’s Supply and Confidence Agreement with the Liberals; their numbers are the same as their vote in the 2021 election.
The Liberals’ challenge is to use the agreement’s protection from an unwanted election to strengthen their precarious public support, to lock in their progressive agenda, and to convince a wary electorate that, as the Liberals frame the option, it is better to move ahead with them than backward with the Conservatives.
With the inflation rate ticking down and employers begging for workers, healthcare has replaced the economy – food prices aside – as Canadians’ biggest concern, according to the polls. The big health issues – on a national level, the federal-provincial underfunding of public healthcare; on a local level, overloaded hospitals, postponed surgeries, intolerable wait times, shortages of nurses and doctors that force the suspension of emergency services – are at the head of the line.
Trudeau’s meeting on Feb. 7 with the provinces and territories to renegotiate the funding of the Canada Health Act will be crucial. If he fails to secure an agreement, he will wear the failure. If he succeeds, he will deny Poilievre, who has stoutly supported provincial demands for more federal money for healthcare, one of his few effective issues.
Lacking the agenda for an alternative government that voters might expect from an adult opposition, Poilievre continues to attack Trudeau personally. “Everything feels broken,” he said the other day, as he accused the Liberals of turning the country into “chaos,” while blaming the prime minister for everything from inflation to assaults on the Toronto transit system, from homeless encampments in big cities to deaths from overdoses of opioids – “Justin tied the hands of our police and failed to hold the scumbag corporations who brought these drugs to our streets accountable.”
It seems no sparrow falls from the sky that does not land on the prime minister’s desk.
Until Friday, when he lashed back, accusing his opponent of courting right-wing radicals, peddling misinformation, ignoring science and pitching dubious Bitcoin investments, Trudeau had, by and large, shrugged off personal attacks from Poilievre and others. He tries to ignore the “freedom” protesters who trail him wherever he goes – even to a restaurant for a quiet dinner – to shout obscenities and accuse him of treason.
It’s all part and parcel of national politics in 2023. I’m sorry, but something is badly wrong. The public deserves better.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com