Bad news budget looms

In his masterful biography of Benjamin Disraeli, former British foreign minister Douglas Hurd said that it is boredom, rather than cynicism, that most accurately explains the present disillusionment with politics.

Disraeli, the 19th-century British prime minister, with his glossy black curls, gold chains and fancy pantaloons, knew how to make politics exciting to people who otherwise find it dull.

It is a lesson Justin Trudeau has heeded — hence the interminable photo opportunities of him kissing babies, balancing babies, and throwing babies in the air; jogging, boxing and canoeing; performing handstands, push ups and attempting the political alchemy of engaging young people in the electoral process.

But there are signs that voters are becoming bored with the governing party’s bread-and-circuses routine.

A four-week rolling poll by Nanos Research released this week showed that Trudeau and the Liberals sank to 12-month lows across a range of criteria, while the Conservatives recorded their best results in a year.

Liberal support was at a year low of 39.4 per cent, compared to the Tories’ 31.2 per cent, while those backing Trudeau as their preferred prime minister sank to 46.3 per cent from its year high of 56.3 per cent.

Liberal optimists will point out this is a nice problem — they are in majority government territory, higher even than when they took power in fall 2015, and prime ministers inevitably see their approval ratings drop 15 months after taking office.

But Trudeau has been rattled by the cash-for-access and Aga Khan vacation stories, which is why, in town halls across the country, he has been performing a highwire act without a safety net.

The “listening tour” — or, perhaps, the Caveat Emptour — will turn out to be a resounding success for the Liberals. Trudeau is relaxed, likable and courteous. Even his critics emerge from the room thinking better of him than when they went in.

There have been stumbles — in Quebec, answering a question in French when it was asked in English smacked of pandering to the francophone vote at the expense of the provinces’s anglos, hardly the behaviour of someone who champions minority rights.

But it’s been a reasonable couple of weeks for the prime minister. Relations with the incoming Trump administration have so far gone better than even he might have hoped. And it appears he can claim that a second pipeline exporting Canadian crude — Keystone XL — will be built on his watch.

However, Trudeau is never again going to enjoy the hegemony in the polls he has experienced since coming to power.

Next week sees the return of parliament, where the opposition will hammer the government relentlessly over its perceived transgressions. But more significantly, the Liberals are putting the final touches to a budget that is unlikely to do it any favours with voters.

The finance minister’s fiscal update in early November pegged the deficit at $25 billion this year, having burned through much of the $6-billion contingency cushion in the period since the 2016 budget. More demands on the public purse have emerged since then, including the need for more defence spending to appease Donald Trump.

Just before Christmas, the finance department released a bleak assessment of the nation’s books. It suggested that, barring any policy changes, Canada will run deficits until 2050, doubling the national debt to $1.5 trillion. This government was elected on the promise that it would record deficits of no more than $10 billion a year — and that they would be eliminated by 2019.

The bad-news budget is likely to cement the recovery of the Conservative Party even before it elects a permanent leader in May.

The threat to the Liberals comes not just from their right on the political spectrum. In an attempt to hold the fiscal line, the government is certain to make promises of restraint that will send progressive voters scuttling toward the NDP.

Canadians are neither bored enough nor disillusioned enough with Justin Trudeau to suggest the Liberals are in trouble.

But the trend-lines of recent weeks indicate we are entering a more competitive environment, where the Liberals will have to calibrate every move with precision as their unsustainable popular support erodes.

It promises to be a very different political year.