What do Liberal voters think now?
Recent polls show Canadians rejecting the Liberal party they supported in 2015. Is the SNC affair driving the shift? A Star mini-survey found some surprising answers.
Susan Murwyn of Halifax voted for t he Li berals i n 2015 hoping for action on the environment and electoral reform.
“He said he was going to do more with the environment and he said he was going to do political reform,” she said, adding she really hoped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would do away with the first-past-the-post electoral system.
“I really wanted that. That was the reason I voted for him.”
But Murwyn doesn’t feel like Trudeau has delivered, and now she feels he’s mishandling the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
“He hasn’t communicated properly,” she said.
Now she plans to vote for Elizabeth May’s Green party. Fiona Organ of Halifax isn’t sure who she’ll be voting for come October. In 2015, it was Trudeau’s Liberals. “He was young and he was out there to do things, very personable,” she said. “Now I’m not sure.”
Organ said she feels like Trudeau hasn’t been up front about the SNC-Lavalin affair.
“It’s almost like he said one thing but he’s doing something different,” she said. “Sometimes to me it feels like there’s not too much honesty there, and that’s very important to me, honesty.” Though Nicholas Anderson says he was never very “politically engaged,” the 28year-old voted for the federal Liberals i n 2015 because they appeared to protect individual freedoms while wanting progressive change.
Four years later, the filmset carpenter says his values have swung far more conservative.
When he heard Maxime Bernier speak last year, Anderson was immediately compelled to join the newly minted populist People’s Party of Canada, saying he had to get politically involved if he wanted to “be able to complain” about things.
Now, Anderson is vice-president of the PPC’s Burnaby-South electoral district association. And that’s the party he’ll be voting for come October. Carson Park, 29, is a self-described lifelong lefty who voted for the Liberals in 2015 because the party appeared to be pro-liberty and marijuana legalization.
And, he says, they “at least pretended to be honest.”
However, the former mortgage broker and current communications consultant says the party botched the rollout of that policy “horribly,” adding he doesn’t like “a lot of the other scandals” facing the embattled party.
Park will vote in his West Kelowna riding for the novel populist People’s Party of Canada. And despite reports the party is fending off the alt-right movement or is composed of white nationalists, Park dispels those notions as “myths.” Luke Gilmore has no regrets about casting his vote for the Liberals in the 2015 federal election.
The 24-year-old French t eacher from Regina said he’s still a strong supporter of Trudeau and the Liberal government despite the fallout from the SNC-Lavalin controversy.
He said he was happy with the prime minister’s statement on Thursday and “took him at his word” as to what transpired.
Overall, he said he’s been encouraged by the Liberal’s governance, and said there has been a “unique” emphasis on Saskatchewan.
He pointed to how the Liberals held their national caucus meeting in Saskatoon in September. When Kiefer McCrae, a 28-yearold set to graduate from Calgary’s Mount Royal University’s policy studies program, voted Liberal in 2015, it was because of the party’s promises for marijuana legalization and electoral reform.
Now, he says, it’s difficult not to be “pissed off” at the party in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin controversy, but he isn’t yet sure where he stands. He said he won’t make a decision on who he votes for in the next election until he hears their 2019 campaign platform.
“We don’t know how much he (Justin Trudeau) knew about it. We don’t know where the actual pressure came from. It’s a ‘he said, she said’ thing,” McCrae said.
“It’s way too early to have a strong opinion on this and on the government’s reaction to it, in my opinion.” Ravi Dodla says he has been closely following the unfolding of the SNC-Lavalin story since its beginning, and what he sees worries him. “Something looks suspicious. I am not entirely sure if there isn’t any corruption involved,” said the Toronto resident, who has voted for Liberal MPs in the past.
The software engineer said he has usually been critical of Trudeau on his economic policies or his “photo opportunity” behaviours — like when he went to India and was seen wearing traditional Indian outfits. But he always viewed the prime minister as a “nice” person, he said.
“This SNC-Lavalin affair changes my perspective of him,” Dodla said. Rebecca Hearn admits not knowing all the details about the SNCLavalin portfolio, but says it bothers her t hat Pri me Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be in the news “for the wrong reasons.”
“People around him don’t seem to have a lot of confidence in him now,” Hearn said. “The fact that the ministers in his cabinet, who were appointed by him, are resigning and quitting on him, that is a big concern for me.”
The west-end Toronto resident and pet store manager said it is hard to know the truth in politics: Some people are siding with Trudeau, while others are against him. While she wants to continue to believe in the prime minister and his political agenda, the SNC-Lavalin saga could change her mind and ultimately influence her choice in the next federal election, she said.