The Decibel - Is Trudeau leading the Liberals to an election day shellacking?

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

The latest poll numbers are looking grim for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. According to an Abacus poll in February, the Trudeau-led Liberals are polling at 24 per cent and the PM himself is deeply unpopular among voters of all ages. More than a year out from the next election, is the incumbent government already doomed?John Ibbitson, The Globe’s Writer-At-Large, explains the factors that have led to the Liberals’ steep decline and whether this is simply the end of a political cycle – as a new one could soon begin.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The gap between the federal Liberals and the Conservatives has been widening since the summer. Recent polls show that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals aren't very popular, and now they're even losing support in long-standing strongholds like Quebec. The Globe's writer-at-large, John Ibbotson, is here today to discuss what this all means for the current federal government and how the stage is being set for the next election. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. John, thanks for being here. Always a pleasure, Mainika. Can we start by just talking about these latest polling numbers, John?

Why do you find them significant? Well, you shouldn't base a column or any other analysis on just a poll. But the interesting thing about these last two polls is, first of all, they confirm what we've known since the summer, that the Conservatives have built a very substantial lead in all regions of the country and all age groups. But the poll by Decibel and even more the poll by Leger confirmed that the Conservatives are now running neck and neck with the Liberals in the province of Quebec. The province of Quebec is one of the Liberal bastions. If the Liberals were to start seriously losing seats in Quebec, they would be in for a

very rough time on election night. These polls suggest they're in for a very rough time on election night. Can we actually get into some of the numbers? What are we talking about here in terms of the difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives? Sure. So the polls, if you put them all together, and I'm stealing here, by the way, from Philippornier's 338canada.com, which is a very fine site. It looks as though the Liberals are now in third place behind both the Conservatives and the NDP everywhere west of Ontario. In Ontario, they are more than 10 points behind the Conservatives.

That means that they are going to not only not take any seats in rural Ontario, because that's the Conservative base in Ontario, but they're going to start seriously losing seats in the 905, in the suburbs surrounding Toronto, the suburbs surrounding Ottawa as well. They could even be losing seats in the downtown, because the NDP could start encroaching on their support there. You now look at the possibility that they could lose seats both to the Bloc and even to the Conservatives in Quebec. And their last bastion, Atlantic Canada, has the Tories well ahead of the Liberals. So there isn't a region of the country where the Liberals aren't in trouble. There isn't a place within their own electoral base, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, in which the Liberals are not in trouble.

This isn't at this point, you know, we're still a ways away from the next election. But at this point, if elections were held tomorrow, the Liberals would not just be facing a loss. They'd be facing a shellacking. And the Quebec numbers in particular are important to pay attention to here, John. Why is that? Quebec is the hardcore base for the Liberal Party. If you were talking about where our party is centered, the Conservatives are centered in the Prairie Provinces. The Liberals are centered in the province of Quebec and in Toronto and Vancouver. If they are falling behind the bloc in Quebec, that's bad. If they are competitive with the

Conservatives in Quebec, that's even worse. That means at the core of your support, that support is weakening. What about Trudeau specifically, John? Do we know about his popularity? Yes, he is deeply unpopular. The latest polling by Nick Nanos for the Globe and Mail shows that 46% of Canadians think he is doing a poor job. Only 25% of Canadians think he's doing a very good job. That's almost not quite two to one. That is the rating that you see when a politician is deeply unpopular, which he is. Yeah, it's really interesting to hear those number now, because, you know, remembering back to 2015, right, when Trudeau was first elected, there was so much excitement about him.

The party had just gone through a couple of unpopular leaders, of course, Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff. And Trudeau came along then with his sunny ways, and he was really popular and really revitalized the party. When did things start to turn for Justin Trudeau? To my money, things started to go wrong with the SNC-Lavalin affair. When the Globe and Mail broke the stories that Mr. Trudeau and his advisors had tried to put pressure on the Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to, in essence, strike a plea deal for the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. All of that sunny ways, all of that optimism,

all of that seemed to just evaporate. And he became an embattled leader struggling to preserve his government. If you remember, the Liberals then lost the popular vote in the 2019 election. And then they lost the popular vote in the 2019 election, and then they lost the popular vote in the 2021 election. And by now, we were into the pandemic, which I think on the whole, most of us, including

me, think that the Trudeau government handled as well as might have been expected. There were problems, but they were handled as well as might have been expected. But then out of the pandemic came inflation. And out of the inflation came rising interest rates. It was impossible for people to meet their obligations to buy food and to pay rent and to fuel the car. Life was just getting tough for people. And when life gets tough for people, the government takes the blame. And that's when the polls started to show this widening gap between the liberals and the conservatives. It's interesting, though, to think about those other bigger things that you're talking about here, because I wonder, like, how much is this about Justin Trudeau?

And how much is this kind of just like, you know, a government kind of reaching a stale point? Because it seems like since the 80s, we've kind of had the seesaw, right? Ten years conservative-ish, ten years-ish for the liberals. Like, how much is this just kind of a trend that happens in Canada? Well, it's hard to measure one versus the other, but you're absolutely right. Brian Mulroney governed for about a decade and then became very unpopular. The cause appeared to be implementing the GST, the failure of the Charlottetown Accord, but he was clearly headed for defeat. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin governed for about a decade. The sponsorship scandal was the thing that did them in.

But after about a decade, they were replaced by Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper governed for a decade. And along came the charismatic, young and exciting Justin Trudeau. And so he was defeated. So even if everything was going fine, we'd be looking at the fact that Justin Trudeau will be a decade in power if the election is held next year. We'd be looking at the fact that no one has won four consecutive elections since Laurier. We'd be looking at the fact that the Liberals lost the popular vote now in two consecutive elections. And we'd be looking

at a change of government. That would be, I think, the situation under any circumstances. You take to that the consequences of the pandemic, you add to that inflation, you add to that interest rates, you add to that housing unaffordability, and you get the situation we're in now. Let's talk about Pierre Polyev too, as well, the conservative leader. Before him, there was Aaron O'Toole, there was Andrew Scheer, who weren't leaders who generated that much excitement. But Polyev seems to have a, I don't know, a bit of like an it factor. People are getting excited about him. How does his popularity play into all of this, John?

Well, some people are getting excited about him. Absolutely. Mr. Polyev generates enthusiasm among core conservative voters in a way that neither Mr. Scheer nor Mr. O'Toole did. They love him. The fundraising is amazing. The energy is amazing. But if you look at the broader public,

he's somewhat more popular than Justin Trudeau, but he's not much more popular than Justin Trudeau. And Justin Trudeau is very unpopular. So I don't think this is a Pierre Polly of waves so much as it is a Justin Trudeau depression. But there's also something else going on as well. We are seeing across the developed world, populist right-wing leaders generating enthusiasm among especially younger voters. We saw it in the elections in the Netherlands. We saw it in Argentina. We're seeing it in regional elections in Germany and elsewhere. Young people

are angry. They're angry everywhere. They feel they've been let down. They feel that they don't have the hopes and the expectations that their parents had. And they are reacting by flocking to populist conservative leaders. I think that is happening here as well with Mr. Polyev.

But I think right now, Mr. Polyev is beating Mr. Trudeau pretty much everywhere, no matter what the age range, no matter what the gender, no matter what the region. I can't think of anywhere where the liberals can point and say, here, at least we're more popular with these people. So that's the conservatives. Let's talk about the NDP as well. Of course, they have the supply and confidence agreement with the liberals to help keep them in power. Jagmeet Singh is also trying to push through his pharma care plan. He set kind of the end of February as a deadline to see progress on that. So we're watching what happens there. But let me just ask you broadly, John, how does this deal with the NDP affect how people view the liberals and Trudeau especially? It has to be said that the NDP is not getting credit

for propping up the liberals, pushing through through pharmacare, pushing through dental care. They're still at around 18, 20 percent, about one fifth of the vote where they traditionally are. It also has to be said that Mr. Singh is not very popular in Quebec. The Great Orange Wave, the Jack Layton engineered in 2011, even Tom Mulcair had substantial support in Quebec when he was leader of the NDP. That's gone. That said, the NDP aren't that far behind the Liberals.

The Liberals always say at election time, you can't vote NDP, it'll split the vote, we'll get conservatives elected. But if the NDP can pull up its popular vote in the greater Vancouver area, in the Toronto area, maybe even in parts of the 905, then you could have an evening out. You could have the Liberals and the NDP close together in the polls, at which point that liberal argument, you can't split the vote, ceases to be a very compelling argument because the NDP could be doing just as well as the Liberals. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it's a possibility. The Liberals must stop this erosion of support. If it gets any worse, they could find themselves in third place, which they were in in 2011.

We'll be back after this message. Of course, this isn't the first time that the Liberals have been in a tough spot. Maybe we can go back in history a little bit here, John, and talk about some of the big liberal defeats of the past that we've seen in Canada and what we can learn really from those instances. So can you take us through three of those dates? Sure. Let's look at 58, 84, and 2011. So in 1958, John Diefenbaker had won the year before a minority government. The liberals had responded by making Lester Pearson the new leader of the Liberal Party. Pearson made a terrible mistake. He went straight to the House of Commons and said that John Diefenbaker should resign as

prime minister and let the liberals take over. The liberals were actually not doing that well in the polls. Why Pearson decided to say that remains a mystery. He himself said it was one of the stupidest things he'd ever done in his political life. So, Diefenbaker said, all right, let's go to the country. And his campaign slogan was, follow John. And the entire country followed John. It was one of the great wipeouts of electoral history. And the liberals were reduced to a small rump in the House of Commons. And you had this huge majority government for John Diefenbaker. In 1984, Pierre Trudeau had been in power since 1968, with the exception of the brief Joe Clark interregnum. The economy was not doing well. There'd been a lot of constitutional

fighting. The National Energy Program was infuriating the West. And Mr. Trudeau decided to take a walk in the snow, by the way, on the 29th of February, 1984. And this year is a leap year as well. Coming up to that date. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so mark the date. The Liberals responded by making John Turner their new leader. And John Turner had been popular in the past, but he'd been out of the game for a long time. And Mulroney walked away with, again, a huge landslide, brought the Liberals down to 40%. In the free trade election, we became the first conservative government to win a second consecutive majority in 100 years. In 2011,

Stephen Harper had been in power through two minority governments. The Liberals had chosen Michael Ignatieff as their leader. The Conservatives did a masterful job of painting him as aloof, intellectual, out of touch, not even in the country through most of his adult life. Just visiting was the Tory slogan. With such a focus on his own success, he's not in it for you or for Canada. He's just in it for himself. It's the only reason he's back. Michael Ignatieff, just visiting.

At that election was an even worse disaster. The Liberals were reduced to third place status in the House of Commons. That's where the party was when Justin Trudeau took it over. So sometimes when the Liberals lose, they really lose big. And so I guess looking back at the poll numbers that we started talking with then, like these past examples, how do they compare to the current moment the liberals are in? Like, is it, I guess, is it this dire today? Is it as bad as it would be in 58, 84, 2011? Not yet. And elections matter. Justin Trudeau,

if he does decide to carry on and fight the next election, is a very skilled campaigner. He might well be able to rally the base, save the furniture, as they call it, even if he loses the election, leave a strong caucus for the next leader. But on the other hand, he is starting out from a bad place and things could go badly just as easily as they could go well. So there is a possibility of a complete liberal blowout or just a traditional liberal defeat followed by a conservative majority government. But as they say, if an election were held tomorrow, the liberals would be in a lot of trouble. And of course, Trudeau has said he will lead the party into the next election. Of course,

there's always the chance that things could change. I wonder internally, do we know how the Liberal Party is feeling about him as leader? There was a Newfoundland Liberal MP who came out a few weeks ago saying it was time for Trudeau to go, but then he walked it back. So do we know, is this kind of sentiment common in the Liberal ranks? We know that there are Liberal MPs, captains for that matter, advisors who are looking at those numbers and aren't happy. How could they possibly be happy? But there's no stab in the back movement underway. There's no Chrystia Freeland wants Justin Trudeau's job and is trying to rally support in caucus and in the party to challenge his leadership.

She's very loyal. Mark Carney could have, like Brian Mulroney did, argued that it's time for someone from outside to take over the party and try to rally support to bring down Justin Trudeau. But he's not doing anything like that at all. The former central bank governor is being very loyal. We've got to remember, especially within the government, everybody who has their job has a job because Justin Trudeau gave them their job. There aren't factions within the Liberal caucus. There's just the Justin Trudeau party. So it's up to him to decide if and when he leaves or whether he keeps going to into the Liberal caucus. There's just the Justin Trudeau party. So it's up to him to decide if

and when he leaves or whether he keeps going into the next election. And when we talked to you last, John, you said that if he were to leave, if he were to step down, he had to do it soon to kind of let a new leader take the reins and have some time before they ran into a next election. Has that time passed? Is it too late for him to step down now? No, but soon has become now. You could see him stepping down in March or even April. The party could have a six-month leadership campaign. The new leader and prime minister would be in place by October or November, giving them about a year if they wanted it, and one more budget to introduce the government to the

people and try to create a new brand, a new image. But you can't leave it later than that. We're not talking months now. We're talking weeks. And in a few weeks, we're going to be talking days. And I guess what is the argument for what is best for the party? Is there an argument that Trudeau should stay on, even if it means he loses the next election? Absolutely, there's an argument for him staying on.

And it goes like this. Absolutely did not work for the liberals to replace Pierre Trudeau with John Turner. Absolutely, it did not work for the conservatives to replace Brian Mulroney with Kim Campbell. So why would it work to replace Justin Trudeau with someone else? The other thing that you can say in favor of him staying on is that he is a skilled campaigner. If he took the party into the next election, even if he lost the election, even if it was a conservative majority government, he would leave the party in decent enough shape that the next leader would have something to build from. Whereas if he leaves now, the new leader could find themselves in just the same place that John Turner and Kim Campbell were at. They could suffer a serious defeat, and then you'd

have all the knives really coming out. The faction that wants to keep the leader in place, the faction that wants the leader replaced. You'd be going right back to where the conservatives were after Andrew Scheer's defeat, after Aaron O'Toole's defeat, where the liberals were during the years of Stephen Harper. So there's those good arguments for him staying on, if he chose to stay on.

A lot, of course, can change quickly in politics. I want to kind of look forward here for the last few minutes, John, and talk about what might affect things in the coming year. I want to ask you specifically about Arrive Can. And this is, of course, the app that you had to use if you were coming into the country during the pandemic. There's a lot of questions now about how much money was spent actually developing this app and a lot of things around this.

Do you think this is going to be a factor in the coming months for this party? I think there are two factors, one positive, one negative for the liberals. And absolutely, the negative factor, bar none, is Arrive Can. It's beginning to feel like the sponsorship scandal. Tens of millions of dollars flowing out the door and no one's quite sure where the money went or into whose pockets and what work, if any, got done for it. The sponsorship scandal, which essentially involved much the same thing, which the globe broke in the early 2000s, in essence brought down Paul Martin's

government. And Justin Trudeau was unpopular even before arrive can arrive. So they're going to have to weather that. And they're already in a weak position. On the other hand, if the bank in Canada starts reducing interest rates, if the economy strengthens, if people are beginning to feel a bit less stressed economically, if things actually start to feel better, then that optimism might translate into renewed support for the Liberal Party. I can't say that I think that's likely, but I can't dismiss that it's possible. I mean, this is an important point, though, right? An election might not be until fall 2025, right? So I guess, are we still too far out to really say anything definitively here?

If I were a good Liberal, I would say sure. But the numbers have been so consistent for so long that it leads a lot of people, including me, to suspect that the electorate had just made up its mind. They're done. They want to quit Justin Trudeau. And there's really nothing that Justin Trudeau can do to change their minds. Could be wrong about that. But the feeling is like the feeling we had when Brian Mulroney was so unpopular. The feeling is like people felt in the early 80s when Pierre Trudeau was so unpopular. The feeling is like people felt in the early 80s when Pierre Trudeau was so unpopular. You can just see that they've decided that's it,

they're done, that they want him gone. John, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Manika, it was my pleasure. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer.

And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.