The landscape of Canadian politics

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/03/2024 (591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We are about two-and-a-half years out from the last federal election and, depending on what happens, a year or so away from the next one. Despite this, many politicians already appear to be in full-on campaign mode. So now is a good time to talk about some trends in party support that seem to be solidifying as time passes.

The most important trend is that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are at historic lows in public opinion and, conversely, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are at remarkable highs. Trudeau scored about 33 per cent of the vote in the 2021 federal election. But the poll aggregator 338 Canada currently pegs Liberal support at 25 per cent.

The inverse is true for Poilievre. The Tories won about 34 per cent of the vote in the last election, but currently stand at 42 per cent in public support.

Under Canada’s electoral system, Poilievre’s huge lead would guarantee a landslide majority government. 338 Canada estimates that the Tories would win 210 out of 338 seats if they hold firm in popular support. In fact, depending on how things shake out on a regional basis, that number could go quite a bit higher.

Nor is this a flash in the pan. The Tories have been ahead of the Liberals most of the time since the last election. But, beginning roughly in mid-2023, the CPC started to pull away.

Poilievre has encountered his fair share of cow pies since then, some of which he has stepped in and others he has deftly avoided. But support for both him and his party has held steady.

A long period of Liberal rule followed by a Conservative super-majority is in keeping with Canada’s electoral history. The Liberals governed for decades before John Diefenbaker led the Tories to the biggest majority government in Canadian history in the 1958 federal election. And decades of Liberal rule (with a brief interruption) came to an end in 1984 when Brian Mulroney scored a Tory majority government that was even bigger than Dief’s.

Poilievre may be the next in line to carry on the tradition.

There is a possibility that Trudeau will resign and make way for a leadership race in the months ahead. Feb. 29 marked the 40^th anniversary of his father’s famous walk in the snow, when Pierre Elliot Trudeau decided to permanently retire from politics. With Trudeau Jr.’s flair for the dramatic, some observers expected him to resign yesterday. But it was not to be.

If Trudeau intends to resign, then he is running out of time to do so. It would be important to provide his successor with as much time as possible to put a stamp on the party prior to the next election, lest that person suffer Kim Campbell’s fate in the 1993 election after she was given scant time following Mulroney’s resignation as PC leader. But the clock is ticking and Trudeau may already have waited too long.

Another feature of contemporary Canadian politics is that, while Liberal support has nose-dived, Jagmeet Singh’s NDP has failed to capitalize on this. Singh scored roughly 18 per cent of the vote in the last election, and currently stands at 19. Given the distribution of NDP support across the country, winning this many votes is unlikely to dislodge the party from its distant fourth-place status in seats behind the Bloc Québécois.

Singh took a calculated risk by entering into a confidence and supply agreement with the Liberal minority government. The NDP has successfully squeezed some policy concessions out of the Liberals, but has not been able to take credit for these.

As Liberal support plummets, there will be a temptation for Singh to pull the plug on the minority parliament in the hope that the NDP can supplant the Liberals as the main centre-left alternative to the Tories in the ensuing election.

Fortune favours the bold, but the reality is that Poilievre is doing so well in the polls now that the Tories are likely to eat the NDP’s lunch in provinces like British Columbia and, to a lesser extent, Manitoba where the Liberals are less competitive.

So this is where we are at present. Tory support seems resilient for the time being and the NDP is likely to stand pat in its agreement with the Liberals. The big source of instability is the Liberal party. If Trudeau steps down, there is potentially a chance (though an increasingly narrow one) for succession and renewal. If Trudeau stays on as Liberal leader, we are likely to see a long, painful march to the latest Conservative super-majority in Canadian history.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.