National Post (National Edition)
Justin Trudeau may have bought himself re-election.
With all of the well-publicized failures of the Liberal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau still enjoys an overall approval rating of 51 per cent, according to the Morning Consult Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker.
In net terms — i.e., subtracting those who disapprove from those who approve — Trudeau stands at eight per cent. That might not sound great, but many world leaders are in negative territory on their net approval ratings, with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga bringing up the rear at -32 per cent.
The outlier in terms of popularity remains Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a 57 per cent net approval rating. Among major Western countries, the leaders of Australia and Germany are doing better than Trudeau, but many are doing much worse.
Why is Trudeau still so popular? Ironically, the answer is COVID-19.
Trudeau is one of a clutch of world leaders who have seen their popularity soar as a result of the pandemic. A look at Trudeau's approval and disapproval ratings going back to the fall of 2019 shows a chart that looks like a pair of scissors.
On Aug. 6, 2019, 55 per cent of those polled by Morning Consult disapproved of Trudeau and only 39 per cent approved. The gap began to close after the Liberals' narrow re-election victory in October 2019, but Trudeau's net approval still remained in negative territory.
The pattern shifted dramatically in March 2020, as the first wave of COVID-19 hit. On March 23, the two lines finally crossed and Trudeau has had positive net approval ratings ever since. Among other Western leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw a similar jump in her approval ratings around the same time as Trudeau's.
While COVID-19 has been, and continues to be, a curse for humanity, the truth is that it has salvaged the careers of numerous politicians who appeared to be in deep trouble less than a year ago. Merkel was seen as a lame duck and Trudeau was reeling from scandals that came to light during his first term, to say nothing of the Blackface controversy that tarnished his woke image.
Fast forward to today, and Merkel is being described as one of Germany's greatest postwar leaders, while the Liberals, according to the latest CBC poll tracker, have a 49 per cent chance of winning a majority if the election were held today.
Despite its various missteps — including its failure to put meaningful restrictions on international travel, the time it's taking to rollout rapid testing and its cock-up of the vaccine rollout — the Trudeau government has managed to buy a lot of voters with its massive public spending.
This government is expected to add $1 trillion to the federal debt by the end of 2024. To put that staggering number in perspective, Canada's deficit — which is expected to be equal to 17.5 per cent of gross domestic product this fiscal year, compared to 1.7 per cent in the last fiscal year — has widened at a faster pace than other major advanced countries.
While such a massive spending spree would be difficult to justify in normal times as anything other than buttering up the public before the next election, the pandemic is the perfect cover for the Liberals to blow the lid off spending and claim that they're doing it purely for the public good. Meanwhile, just about everyone except the wealthy and full-time salaried workers have been doled out their piece of the pie, whether it's the unemployed, students or small businesses.
I've spoken to a number of people who've expressed their gratitude to the government, and Trudeau personally, for the support they have received since the pandemic hit and lockdowns were imposed. The fact that whoever was in charge would likely have launched similar schemes doesn't seem to detract from the fact that Trudeau was the one who actually rode to the rescue. Such is the power of incumbency in a crisis.
Trudeau's spending binge might indeed win the Liberals a hat trick. But the economy will likely do a lot worse. Despite Canada's outsized spending, our economy is actually doing worse on average than those of other advanced countries, having contracted more this year and likely to grow less next year, according to new estimates from the International Monetary Fund. What exactly is all of that spending and increased debt burden buying Canadians?
We certainly know what it's likely to buy the Liberals: a majority government that seemed completely off the table only a year ago. It's become common to label right-wing leaders as populists, but Trudeau fits the bill perfectly as a latter-day leftwing populist who talks the woke talk and spends the big bucks.