The most difficult decision many political leaders face is deciding when to get out, when to accept they have done as much as they realistically can, when to admit to themselves that the longer they linger the greater the risk to their legacy.
Justin Trudeau, seven years as prime minister, doesn’t have to worry about his best-before date just yet; his Get Out of Trouble Free card from the NDP, will protect his minority Liberals from an unwanted election until late summer or early fall of 2025. However, as some recent opinion polls make clear, he will have to climb an uphill path to prevent the rumble of discontent he hears today from swelling into a roar for change.
Everyone seems to be angry about something these days. Angry about a health care system fallen into national disrepair, about the cost of living as inflation outstrips wage increases, about an inadequate supply of affordable housing made worse by mortgage rate increases that put home ownership beyond the reach of young families, about the effects of climate change, and on and on.
This public anger or distress is not exclusive to Canada. It is fueling the political renaissance of Donald Trump in the United States. In Britain, it contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson. Here, it serves as ammunition for the polarizing Pierre Poilievre who is poised to become the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada – or what may remain of it as his right-wing extremism drowns out the party’s remaining moderates.
So far, the sour mood has not extended to voting intentions. Recent polls show party support is virtually unchanged from the September 2021 election. Last week’s tracking from Nanos Research put the Conservatives’ popular vote at 32 per cent and the Liberals at 30, both down marginally from their election numbers, and the NDP up slightly at 22 per cent.
In another survey last week, however, Abacus Data flagged trouble ahead for the Liberals and the prime minister when voters get around to focussing on election choices. Abacus found support is sagging for the federal government; only 34 per cent of respondents said they approved of its performance while 51 per cent said they disapproved.
The disapproval extends to, or originates with, the prime minister. According to Abacus, his numbers are the worst they’ve been since he took office in 2015 – 51 per cent offered a negative impression of Trudeau, compared to 31 per cent with a positive impression. This “favourability” rating of minus 20 compares to minus 7 for Poilievre and a slightly better minus 5 for Poilievre’s leadership opponent, Jean Charest.
The survey puts Trudeau’s rating in negative numbers in all regions. He fares best in Atlantic Canada, at minus 2. In Ontario, it’s minus 16. In Quebec, where the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals are essentially tied in popular support (31-32 per cent), with the Conservatives and New Democrats at 21 and 6 per cent, respectively, Trudeau’s coattails are no longer what they were. Abacus puts the PM’s rating in his home province at minus 11.
Political leaders are not basking in high public esteem these days. But Trudeau is in no danger of being thrown overboard by his party. Liberals don’t devour their leaders as Conservatives do. They took a chance on him back in 2013, an unknown quantity behind a famous name, and he delivered. He brought down the despised (by all Liberals) Stephen Harper in 2015 and kept the Liberals in power through subsequent elections in 2019 and 2021.
How long will the Liberals – to borrow a Brian Mulroney expression – “dance with the one that brung them.” As long as it takes, I’d guess. As long it takes Trudeau to decide if he wants to go for a fourth term in 2025. And that decision will be conditioned by the degree of risk, as Liberals see it, of the country falling into the hands of a Pierre Poilievre government.
Three years seems like a lifetime in politics, but Trudeau may need that long to regain public support. And to implant in voters’ minds his argument that Poilievre is no defender of freedom or deliverer of healthy change, but, rather, is a dangerous radical from the dark fringes the right who is not to be trusted within a light year of national office.
A negative campaign might well not work. It wouldn’t be pretty, and it wouldn’t be easy. But nothing is easy in politics in these angry times.
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