PM TAKES HIT FROM SCANDAL: POLL.
SUPPORT SLIPS
OTTAWA • A new poll shows that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking a personal hit in the Snc-lavalin controversy.
Overall, 41 per cent of respondents to the Leger survey believed the prime minister had done something wrong involving the Montreal engineering giant and former justice minister Jody Wilson-raybould; 12 per cent believed he hadn’t, and 41 per cent said they weren’t sure.
Among respondents who identified themselves as Liberal supporters, 10 per cent believed the prime minister had done something wrong, 27 per cent believed he hadn’t, and 55 per cent weren’t sure.
Among Conservatives, 66 per cent believed the prime minister had done something wrong, four per cent believed he had not and 28 per cent weren’t sure.
Leger’s executive vice-president Christian Bourque said the findings indicate something is happening to public impressions of the prime minister, at least temporarily.
“I think a lot of it leads back to how the prime minister himself has handled the crisis over the last week or so,” Bourque said. “He’s not found a way to reassure Canadians or ... been clear enough about his involvement, what he said or did not say, so that a lot of Canadians right now are holding it up against him because they don’t know all the ins and outs to make up their own mind.”
In a question about which party leader would make the best prime minister, Trudeau got the backing of 26 per cent of respondents, down seven points from a similar poll Leger conducted in November 2018.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer received 21 per cent support, down one point from November. Green Leader Elizabeth May drew eight per cent and New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh got six. Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party of Canada, a former Conservative, was the choice of four per cent of respondents.
Trudeau has faced repeated questions since the Globe and Mail published a story that former justice minister Wilson-raybould was pressured by staff in the Prime Minister’s Office to help Snc-lavalin avoid a criminal case on corruption charges.
The poll was conducted after Wilson-raybould resigned from the cabinet but mostly before Trudeau’s principal secretary Gerald Butts quit on Monday.
Leger’s internet-based survey was done for The Canadian Press using computer-assisted web interviewing technology from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19. It heard from 1,529 Canadian adults.
The results were weighted to reflect age, gender, mother tongue, region and level of education so the results reflected the makeup of the Canadian population.
While a margin of error cannot be associated with web-panel survey data, a probability sample of the same size would have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.