Will voter fatigue and inflation be Trudeau's undoing?
Liberals aired their grievances — now Trudeau has to deliver
Eight and a half years ago, in January 2015, the Liberal Party's 36-member caucus gathered in London, Ont., ahead of a new sitting of Parliament.
There was some reason at the time to believe their leader, Justin Trudeau, would be the next prime minister of Canada. But some of the original shine had come off Trudeau by then. And it would get worse for the Liberals before it got better.
"One of the issues we've got going for us, ironically, is all of these attacks and criticisms are putting him through tests that the public will watch him pass," an adviser to Trudeau said at the time. "It's an arc. It has a story to it."
That analysis proved reasonably prophetic — not just for the campaign that unfolded that year but for the years in power that followed. Trudeau has governed through Donald Trump and COVID-19. He also has survived his share of self-inflicted controversies, embarrassments and low points.
But most political careers end in defeat. And as the 158-member Liberal caucus gathered in London this week, it was fair to wonder whether their hero had finally met an obstacle he could not overcome — whether the grinding forces of time and a rising cost of living are finally bringing him to the end of his story.
Trudeau is being tested. Up to now, the test has not been going well for him.
Liberals under pressure
As Liberal MPs came and went from their meetings this week, they were chased by reporters repeating a dozen versions of the same two questions: Why are things going so badly for you? And what are you going to do about it?
Jenica Atwin, the Liberal MP for Fredericton, offered what arguably was both the most novel and the most insightful response when she observed that, for some people, "it's cool not to like our prime minister right now."
Alexandre Mendes, the MP for Brossard—Saint-Lambert near Montreal, noted that "this mood of of unsatisfaction" is hardly unique to Canada. She's not wrong — there isn't a single leader in the G7 whose approval rating is currently above 50 per cent (Trudeau currently has the third-highest approval rating among G7 leaders).
Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said he still detects some residual faith in Trudeau's government.
"There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of things that people feel in their daily lives and the one is about their budget, their family budget. They see things are getting more expensive and they're looking for government to help them. And that I understand … I see it in my community," Champagne said.
"But that being said, they also tell me, 'You're best placed to have our back. Because we saw it during the pandemic, you had our back.'"
But Champagne's answer also unintentionally explains why the government finds itself trailing the Conservative opposition by a substantial margin in opinion polls.
The government's actions in response to COVID-19 were quick, direct and overwhelming. Even when it wasn't perfect, the response was seen and felt.
The government's response to the current financial crunch has been much less nimble and not at all impressive — especially when it comes to the price and availability of housing. What was once considered a challenge is now described as a "crisis," but the government has not responded with new force and activity.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been allowed to dine out on the idea that Trudeau is not just failing to deal with the problem but is also largely to blame for it.
Some combination of public anxiety and dismal poll numbers surely explains why Liberals were so restive in advance of this week's meetings. When polls are good, a lot of grievances can be forgiven — when polls go bad, MPs start worrying about job security. If nothing else, the session with Trudeau on Wednesday seems to have been an opportunity to air out some of the complaints MPs had privately been accumulating.
What exactly that "robust" discussion will amount to remains to be seen.
Casting blame for a slide in the polls
In any political crisis, the first thing that gets blamed is "comms" — shorthand for "communications" — and how well the government is explaining and selling itself. (Journalists particularly like this one because it's the easiest thing to see and hear and pontificate on — everyone in Ottawa fancies themselves a political strategist.) The second target is the leader's advisers.
Should the prime minister shake up his office? Launch attack ads against the Conservative leader? Redouble efforts to connect with his caucus? These are worthy (or at least fun) questions to consider. But they're not likely to get any houses built.
"Canadians don't want to see politicians arguing back and forth," Trudeau said Thursday, in response to a question about Conservative attacks on him. "They want to see us rolling up our sleeves and delivering them the kinds of housing, the kind of support, the kind of aids on groceries and competition and on small businesses that we're announcing today."
That answer might double as an explanation for why the Liberals aren't yet filling the airwaves with anti-Poilievre ads — or why such ads might be of limited utility until the Liberals have more to say for themselves. "Delivering" for Canadians doesn't guarantee that Trudeau will succeed, but delivering is probably an integral part of any scenario in which he does.
Two weeks ago, Abacus Data asked its survey respondents to rate how the Liberal government was handling a number of files. And the problem for the government isn't that the people who said it had a "bad plan" on housing (26 per cent) outnumbered the people who said it had a "good plan" (19 per cent). The real problem is that 39 per cent said the government had no plan.
A similar split emerged on "managing the cost of living" — 19 per cent said the government had a good plan, 33 per cent said the government had a bad plan and 35 per cent said it had no plan.
Why Trudeau needs to deliver
Liberals can fairly say that they have been doing things to deal with these concerns. But it evidently hasn't been enough, particularly on the issue of housing. And as the cost of real estate and rent moved past the crisis point, the government did not meet the moment with a new set of measures.
Wednesday's rollout of the first investment from the Housing Accelerator Fund and Thursday's announcement of a series of moves to encourage construction and tamp down grocery prices looks like the start of a much more robust response — one that undercuts somewhat a lot of the policies that Poilievre says he would pursue.
But this week's moves likely aren't enough, either. And a Liberal MP probably wasn't being entirely hyperbolic when they anonymously suggested this week that Trudeau had four to six months to turn things around.
The longer the polls stay bad, the easier it gets for MPs and pundits to blame the leader himself — and imagine that things might be better if someone else was the leader. People could get antsy. Things could fall apart. And that may be especially possible in the case of a prime minister who is about to enter his ninth year in office.
It's still too early to say with any real certainty how Trudeau's story will end. But it's easy to wonder whether the hero of the Liberal story has finally found a predicament he cannot surmount.
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