Justin Trudeau is in trouble. Beset by economic headwinds, unpopular policy decisions and personal controversies, the Canadian Prime Minister’s Liberal Party now lags up to 10 points in the polls behind the Conservatives. He faces a tough battle to win a fourth term in the upcoming election, says Daniel Johnson in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
Canadians have finally fallen out of love with Trudeau. The shine has come off a career that at times seemed to defy political gravity. Instead of Trudeaumania, the nation is suffering from Trudeau fatigue.
The Liberal Prime Minister’s approval ratings have slumped below 30% among voters aged 18 to 34, according to national polling group the Angus Reid Institute. This is the group whose enthusiasm helped get Trudeau elected in 2015, re-elected in 2019 and again – just about – in 2021.
Voting intentions tell the same story, with a widening gap between the ruling Liberals and the Conservative opposition. Disillusionment has been fuelled by economic factors, including soaring interest rates and a housing crisis.
From a British perspective, Canada may not seem to be doing too badly. Inflation is running at less than half the U.K. level and there are no major public sector strikes, NHS waiting lists or small boats. But Canada has its own problems.
Mortgage costs on an average home in Canada now eat up 60% of typical incomes, according to the National Bank. The figure is 90% in Toronto and over 100% in Vancouver. For first-time buyers, prices are simply unaffordable. Their rage is focused on the man they trusted with their votes, not once but thrice. …
The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, is popular but not populist, younger than the PM but without his baggage. He offers a modernising, moderately libertarian agenda, a change from the Liberals’ big state profligacy and fiscal incontinence. For the first time in eight years, Trudeau is up against a dangerous opponent.
Canadian voters have been slowly souring on their Prime Minister for a while. The cult of personality that has surrounded Trudeau, which was assiduously cultivated by him on social media, became a bad joke when historic photographs of the future PM in ‘blackface’ surfaced in 2019.
Suddenly his wokery resembled hypocrisy and the idolisation of ‘Social Justice Justin’ gave way to mockery.
Trudeau’s image as an all-Canadian family man was also dealt a blow this summer when news emerged that the PM and his glamorous wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, had separated. The former TV presenter’s occasional absence from his side at international summits had been noticed. …
Eight years ago, it all felt so different. Justin Trudeau swept into office aged just 43, the second youngest prime minister in his country’s history and the scion of its most celebrated family.
Justin Trudeau’s implicit promise was to recreate the golden era of liberalism from 1968 to 1984, when his father Pierre dominated Canadian politics. …
Yet dynasties often disappoint. Justin Trudeau has failed to deliver, either for the younger generation who saw him as a standard-bearer of liberal values, or for the middle-aged voters who hark back with nostalgia to the heady days of his father’s reforms.
A Research Co poll in July found that whereas Pierre Trudeau was the most popular choice for the best Canadian PM in modern times, Justin was by a considerable margin seen as the worst. …
Many of Trudeau’s policies reflect his centre-Left economic views but they often have a tinge of protectionism. For example, under a law introduced in 2022, non-Canadians are banned from buying residential property unless they themselves are permanent residents. There is scant evidence that this legislation will help to alleviate housing shortages, as the Trudeau Government claims, but it has certainly sent a signal to foreign investors: keep out of Canada.
The same applies to Trudeau’s environmental policies. He wants to phase out the oil and gas industries, thereby eviscerating the economy of Alberta, and impose a draconian carbon tax which will handicap economic growth across the board.
The country lacks an entrepreneurial culture: a recent Financial Times list of 100 top global companies included only one Canadian firm. Unlike its larger neighbour to the south, Canada is falling behind by most measures. This is despite the emphasis placed by Trudeau on mass immigration. Indeed, some critics have suggested that his only strategy for economic growth is to increase the population by importing more “peoplekind” – a term he coined and which has attracted much ridicule. …
Trudeau is a self-proclaimed “cultural Catholic” but appears to disdain his own religion while pandering to others. When some 30 churches were burned down by Left-wing activists in response to claims of the discovery of mass graves of indigenous schoolchildren, Trudeau was accused of doing nothing to protect Catholic communities.
Instead, he buys into the darkest possible view of Canada’s colonial history: not merely a racist past, but a genocidal one. He claims that “Canada has no core identity” and thus reduces to absurdity his father’s carefully judged cultural pluralism.
Always eager to be woker than thou, in his Twitter feed the prime minister adds ‘2S’ in front of the usual litany of LGBTQ… This acronym means ‘two spirits’ and refers to the tiny minority of the indigenous First Peoples who do not identify as male or female, but with the spirits of both.
Just in case anyone was in any doubt, Trudeau told a Liberal Party conference this year that “transgender women are women”. He has backed the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports and their access to women-only spaces.
While keen to talk up his progressive credentials on ‘soft’ issues around culture and identity, Trudeau has proved much less able when it comes to dealing with real-world crises.
Worth reading in full.
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