Why is Trudeau collapsing? Canadians don’t trust him to govern. He spends too much time talking bad policy on issues that are second tier at best, and leaves everyone hanging when it comes to the top issues they care about.
It’s not even that Canadians disagree with him. It’s that he’s punted completely.
And power abhors a vacuum. If he won’t show leadership and get in front of issues, we’ll vote for anyone who does.
Frankly, Trudeau should be doing daily, or at least weekly, covid-style briefings on affordability, housing, environment, healthcare. That was him at his best, clearly communicating the ways his government was working to solve problems.
Just tipping point. A lot of the current issues were still ramping up. They were certainly on the horizon but Trudeau had a certain amount of goodwill built up.
I guess what I’m saying is that a lack of leadership and direction when an issue first occurs, and a lack of leadership and direction six months later isn’t actually the same situation. All of this was true in March. But it’s no longer March
While it may be true in a general sense, that Poilievre essentially has been spamming the airwaves and gaining exposure for himself, it still doesn’t explain the by-elections, or the “tipping point” being… two weeks ago? Not March, nor May even, but July?
Not saying it’s “wrong” necessarily to be concerned about the traction Poilievre appears to have, but there’s a big question mark still as what would have caused the “point” to tip so suddenly. There hasn’t been any real catalyst pushing the Liberals from roughly competitive to being in the dirt, other than the rate hikes in late July (which Evan noted, didn’t see a major polling shift for the last ones), or even the carbon price increase (which hasn’t done any damage at any point in the past). Something just doesn’t add up.
I really think that it was his “provincial responsibility” response to housing.
It’s not that it was factually incorrect. It’s that he didn’t have a better response.
He could have attacked the provinces on their lack of action. He could have had specific proposals for the provinces to cooperate with. He could have declared a plan that ignored the provinces and dared them to interfere.
He needed to do *anything* that showed an engaged and passionate response.
But he passed. I think the backlash is rooted in the feeling that after months of growing pressure he was expected to have a better answer.
The first Abacus poll showing a C+10 appeared on July 26, a week before Trudeau’s “controversial” comments, the separation etc. I suppose one could argue the point of a general erosion leading up to this point, but all those issues were still present before that poll was announced, and the Liberals were still competitive up until then, even outperforming their relatively bearish ones in by-elections.
Does any of this mean those issues should be ignored, no, but it’s fair to argue (as Evan has) that a number of mitigating factors combined with a paucity of data mean it’s plausible that the severity of the deficit is somewhat inflated or distorted by random noise.
I think he is also arguing that even if it is concrete, it is not unrecoverable or fatal if the Liberals move to take those issues more seriously in the second half of their term.
I completely agree that there’s nothing irreversible here. If the government aggressively tackles a couple of these high profile files a year from now no one will remember this at all
On the other hand is the collapse of Liberal support just par for the course? Most of the PMs these days are averaging 10 years, or three elections, whatever comes first, before their shelf life expires. Gotta laugh at the Poilievre makeover. Now he looks like a mini version of Justin Trudeau. Poilievre’s expiration date may come much quicker because it will take a couple years before everyone learns to spell his name right and that’s just too much work.
Regarding Ford, I am afraid there will only be consequences if there are criminal charges. With a solid majority, and a docile caucus, the provincial parliament is not a concern for Ford. And come election time, he will just say, I may be corrupt, but at least I tried do something about housing.
I'm not sure about that. When I read the G&M story this a.m. there were 300+ comments. Out of the 'most respected' category (which is all that I read) I didn't see ONE positive comment. Not sure this meets the level of corruption, but at the very least it's incompetence.
I don’t think that the situation for Liberals right now is fundamentally different from let’s say 2 months ago. We are talking about 3-5% of the voters that currently saying that they might vote CPC, when they gave a lukewarm support to the Liberals 2 months ago. That does not mean that this should be ignored, but for example it is not anywhere close to position that the Conservatives in the UK right now.
With Poilievre is constant campaign / attack mode, it feels like elections are around the corner, but obviously they are not. There is time for the Liberals to develop sound and bold ideas about the issues that Canadians currently care about. It is possible that the Liberals are pacing themselves and don’t want to introduce these ideas too far out of an election, but on the other hand, yielding the field to Poilievre for too long is also not without risk.
If the Liberals were institutionally capable of developing sound and bold ideas about the issues that Canadians currently care about, they wouldn’t be in this mess.
I’m not being snarky. Being the party of good governance is the explicit Liberal platform. That’s their selling point to voters.
They shouldn’t require a crisis and public pressure to actually do that job. Getting ahead of these problems should be an instinctive institutional reflex for them, the way cutting taxes is for the Conservatives. The fact that it isn’t is concerning
18 months ago we still needed a negative Covid test to enter Canada. We went up to 7% inflation and back down to 2-3%. We went from a 6 months delay in getting a passport to less than 10 business days (just renewed my passport). On top of that there is now a full blown war in Europe.
The rate of change in the past 2 years has been of another order of magnitude. I have some sympathy that the government appears to be not as focused on issues that were less of a priority when we were trying to keep people alive and the economy going. And Canada did probably as well as possible compared to other countries of similar wealth.
Now, the issues that Canadians rightfully care about are mostly a shared responsibility with provinces and some cases municipalities. Voters are telling the federal government that they do not care who’s responsibility it is, they want something done on housing and healthcare. So far the federal government has been playing nice with the provinces, which was necessary during the pandemic. It is time for the gloves to come off and become much more vocal and engaged about this. I estimate that the Liberals have about 6 months to roll out this new stance, followed by 1 year of implementation till the election. There is time, but the window is closing.
The question mark no one seems to be able to explain is why the sudden bottoming out at the end of July, when all those issues were still present and they were roughly competitive up until that point. Literally the only thing that seems to make sense is the rate hike, but that’s only because nothing else that could be considered major actually took place.
Regardless, if things actually are as bad as they seem to be, then the Liberals have their work cut out for them in climbing out of this pit. If the severity of the deficit is exaggerated for whatever reason, whether it be statistical noise or non-representative samples in the summer, then it still couldn’t hurt, and can only help, to get some accomplishments under their belt and tout them extensively.
The sticking point just seems to be the “why now?” part that Evan wrote about in his column, and so far there hasn’t really been a satisfactory “aha!” light bulb to explain the seismic shift.
It is summer and it is really a small change in political support. We are talking about 3% of the voters, not a seismic shift of 10-15% of the electorate.
Why is Trudeau collapsing? Canadians don’t trust him to govern. He spends too much time talking bad policy on issues that are second tier at best, and leaves everyone hanging when it comes to the top issues they care about.
It’s not even that Canadians disagree with him. It’s that he’s punted completely.
And power abhors a vacuum. If he won’t show leadership and get in front of issues, we’ll vote for anyone who does.
Frankly, Trudeau should be doing daily, or at least weekly, covid-style briefings on affordability, housing, environment, healthcare. That was him at his best, clearly communicating the ways his government was working to solve problems.
All of this was true in May or March, and his polls weren’t this bad then
Just tipping point. A lot of the current issues were still ramping up. They were certainly on the horizon but Trudeau had a certain amount of goodwill built up.
I guess what I’m saying is that a lack of leadership and direction when an issue first occurs, and a lack of leadership and direction six months later isn’t actually the same situation. All of this was true in March. But it’s no longer March
While it may be true in a general sense, that Poilievre essentially has been spamming the airwaves and gaining exposure for himself, it still doesn’t explain the by-elections, or the “tipping point” being… two weeks ago? Not March, nor May even, but July?
Not saying it’s “wrong” necessarily to be concerned about the traction Poilievre appears to have, but there’s a big question mark still as what would have caused the “point” to tip so suddenly. There hasn’t been any real catalyst pushing the Liberals from roughly competitive to being in the dirt, other than the rate hikes in late July (which Evan noted, didn’t see a major polling shift for the last ones), or even the carbon price increase (which hasn’t done any damage at any point in the past). Something just doesn’t add up.
I really think that it was his “provincial responsibility” response to housing.
It’s not that it was factually incorrect. It’s that he didn’t have a better response.
He could have attacked the provinces on their lack of action. He could have had specific proposals for the provinces to cooperate with. He could have declared a plan that ignored the provinces and dared them to interfere.
He needed to do *anything* that showed an engaged and passionate response.
But he passed. I think the backlash is rooted in the feeling that after months of growing pressure he was expected to have a better answer.
The first Abacus poll showing a C+10 appeared on July 26, a week before Trudeau’s “controversial” comments, the separation etc. I suppose one could argue the point of a general erosion leading up to this point, but all those issues were still present before that poll was announced, and the Liberals were still competitive up until then, even outperforming their relatively bearish ones in by-elections.
Does any of this mean those issues should be ignored, no, but it’s fair to argue (as Evan has) that a number of mitigating factors combined with a paucity of data mean it’s plausible that the severity of the deficit is somewhat inflated or distorted by random noise.
I think he is also arguing that even if it is concrete, it is not unrecoverable or fatal if the Liberals move to take those issues more seriously in the second half of their term.
I completely agree that there’s nothing irreversible here. If the government aggressively tackles a couple of these high profile files a year from now no one will remember this at all
On the other hand is the collapse of Liberal support just par for the course? Most of the PMs these days are averaging 10 years, or three elections, whatever comes first, before their shelf life expires. Gotta laugh at the Poilievre makeover. Now he looks like a mini version of Justin Trudeau. Poilievre’s expiration date may come much quicker because it will take a couple years before everyone learns to spell his name right and that’s just too much work.
Regarding Ford, I am afraid there will only be consequences if there are criminal charges. With a solid majority, and a docile caucus, the provincial parliament is not a concern for Ford. And come election time, he will just say, I may be corrupt, but at least I tried do something about housing.
I'm not sure about that. When I read the G&M story this a.m. there were 300+ comments. Out of the 'most respected' category (which is all that I read) I didn't see ONE positive comment. Not sure this meets the level of corruption, but at the very least it's incompetence.
I don’t think that the situation for Liberals right now is fundamentally different from let’s say 2 months ago. We are talking about 3-5% of the voters that currently saying that they might vote CPC, when they gave a lukewarm support to the Liberals 2 months ago. That does not mean that this should be ignored, but for example it is not anywhere close to position that the Conservatives in the UK right now.
With Poilievre is constant campaign / attack mode, it feels like elections are around the corner, but obviously they are not. There is time for the Liberals to develop sound and bold ideas about the issues that Canadians currently care about. It is possible that the Liberals are pacing themselves and don’t want to introduce these ideas too far out of an election, but on the other hand, yielding the field to Poilievre for too long is also not without risk.
If the Liberals were institutionally capable of developing sound and bold ideas about the issues that Canadians currently care about, they wouldn’t be in this mess.
I’m not being snarky. Being the party of good governance is the explicit Liberal platform. That’s their selling point to voters.
They shouldn’t require a crisis and public pressure to actually do that job. Getting ahead of these problems should be an instinctive institutional reflex for them, the way cutting taxes is for the Conservatives. The fact that it isn’t is concerning
18 months ago we still needed a negative Covid test to enter Canada. We went up to 7% inflation and back down to 2-3%. We went from a 6 months delay in getting a passport to less than 10 business days (just renewed my passport). On top of that there is now a full blown war in Europe.
The rate of change in the past 2 years has been of another order of magnitude. I have some sympathy that the government appears to be not as focused on issues that were less of a priority when we were trying to keep people alive and the economy going. And Canada did probably as well as possible compared to other countries of similar wealth.
Now, the issues that Canadians rightfully care about are mostly a shared responsibility with provinces and some cases municipalities. Voters are telling the federal government that they do not care who’s responsibility it is, they want something done on housing and healthcare. So far the federal government has been playing nice with the provinces, which was necessary during the pandemic. It is time for the gloves to come off and become much more vocal and engaged about this. I estimate that the Liberals have about 6 months to roll out this new stance, followed by 1 year of implementation till the election. There is time, but the window is closing.
The question mark no one seems to be able to explain is why the sudden bottoming out at the end of July, when all those issues were still present and they were roughly competitive up until that point. Literally the only thing that seems to make sense is the rate hike, but that’s only because nothing else that could be considered major actually took place.
Regardless, if things actually are as bad as they seem to be, then the Liberals have their work cut out for them in climbing out of this pit. If the severity of the deficit is exaggerated for whatever reason, whether it be statistical noise or non-representative samples in the summer, then it still couldn’t hurt, and can only help, to get some accomplishments under their belt and tout them extensively.
The sticking point just seems to be the “why now?” part that Evan wrote about in his column, and so far there hasn’t really been a satisfactory “aha!” light bulb to explain the seismic shift.
It is summer and it is really a small change in political support. We are talking about 3% of the voters, not a seismic shift of 10-15% of the electorate.
However, I sincerely hope this is a wake up call.
.. I buy this in general but some is way over my head.. as always my proviso is.. it’s a long way to October 20 - on or before
Polls are primarily just ‘prediction propaganda’ to me - I’m concerned as it’s also ‘incremental & daily.
Breathless pronouncements & cue the sudden gasp sfx.. guy runnin his mouth daily & now in body sculpture new camouflage
.. and lo.. there was fair Pierre as Top Gun meets Right Stuff meets Mr Rogers..
say what ? 100,00 Carleton Voters hold his Career in their pencils
and not ‘the Polls’ & furthermore not a single voter in any single place he’s had one of his 150 plus bible style ‘Rallies’
& cowardly avoiding & skipping his constituency
I dearly wish to rain all over his disgustingly venal parade.. so yes Mr Scrimshaw..
will be Indy Guerrilla Media on my part & others versus the PartisanMediaMachine Horde
It’s not going to be a ‘Fair Fight’ .. not at all.. & yes I know.. but sorry, I don’t intend it to be 🦎🏴☠️
Abacus close to skirting professional standards: https://www.canadianresearchinsightscouncil.ca/standards/por/