Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals remain deeply unpopular, currently trailing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives by as many as 17 points in the polls, after more than a year of lagging behind.
If an election was held today, the Conservatives would likely trounce the Liberals and cruise to a majority government, with polling aggregator 338Canada projecting the Conservatives would win 212 seats, based on the current polling data. The Liberals would win just 74 seats.
A recent poll by Nanos Research, commissioned by CTV News, found only nine per cent of Canadians say Trudeau is the most politically appealing option for party leadership.
Those abysmal numbers, coupled with the stunning decision last weekend by U.S. President Joe Biden to end his re-election bid amid mounting concerns about his own viability as a candidate, have the Ottawa bubble abuzz with speculation: Is a major cabinet shuffle on the horizon? Could Trudeau walk away? If he does, who replaces him?
No.
We had a technocrat masquerading as a populist with Trudeau. Having another technocrat doesn’t help with the problem: that most people don’t see the Liberals as doing anything for regular people. This is like the Ontario Liberals picking Crombie because they think they need someone more “centrist” and “establishment” to win OPC voters, when the problem is that Doug Ford does a better job of articulating regular people’s concerns.
Not that Poillevre isn’t worse: He’s as much as establishment weasel, only with a shot of fascism to help mask the taste.
If the Liberals want to succeed, they need to prove–before the election–that they’re willing to forsake the rich to help everyone else. Right now, they’re pulling the usual Liberal bullshit of “we’ll do all sorts of progressive stuff, for realz, honest, if you just elect us again!”.
Maybe ramp that capital gains tax up on the ultra wealthy? That’d be a good start.
I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said here, but in what way is Trudeau a “technocrat”? The main conservative critique of him before his election was that his previous work was as a teacher and that he was too young to lead the country. One of his big claims to fame has been appointing cabinet positions based on identity rather than aptitude. I don’t see how you could claim that he’s a “technocrat”. He’s a fairly run-of-the-mill politician.
If anything, Harper had a better claim to the title of “technocrat” since he had a background in economics, although he then went on to fill his cabinet with people who viewed the government as a stolen car in a chop-shop, so he wasn’t really a technocrat either.
Totally agree with your comment here. I just wish the NDP could get people to vote for them.
I don’t know Jagmeet Singh well, but unfortunately people aren’t ready for a brown Sikh man as a PM in Canada. Especially since there’s all sorts of stories regarding Sikh extremists and Canada.