Centrist voters key for PM
Trudeau’s shine is gone. Is that enough to swing voters if an election is called?
Gosh, those past Liberal voters — the ones who cast ballots for the party almost a year ago — are some smart cookies. In the days immediately following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearance before the House of Commons finance committee, Trudeau’s 2019 electoral backers revealed three things, according to data from the Angus Reid Institute: that a majority had been following the proceedings, that half believed his testimony represented not the end of the story, but a harbinger of more revelations to come, and that ultimately, the government they chose would survive the scandal.
On the latter two, their instincts were more than correct (albeit in the short term). The release of thousands of pages of emails and other documents detailing how the Canada Student Service Grant program came about contradicted testimony given by the prime minister and other senior ministers, especially around timelines. The “besties” email also drew a straight line between WE and former finance minister Bill Morneau. In short, none of it was good news for the Trudeau government. It turned out there was more to come after all.
Morneau’s political career is no more. This may be creating headlines and political shock waves internationally, but his tenure in politics will be forgotten by Canadian voters reasonably soon. Morneau, a Bay Street darling but not a political animal, never really connected with the electorate, whose imagination (for better or worse) is far more galvanized by his replacement, Chrystia Freeland.
But will all this result in the end of the Trudeau government? Will his minority be brought down over the affair? Not at least until next month anyway. Parliament is now prorogued until Sept. 23. The opposition parties may howl at the moon over this, but former prime minister Stephen Harper set the precedent.
His back to the wall in
2008, his political foes ready to bring him down on a vote of non-confidence, Harper called an indefinite timeout. In an act that resembles a more cynical play than sunny way, Trudeau’s pulling of the same lever might be seen as slightly weasel-esque. But unlike Harper, this prime minister has set a date for return, a vote in the House on a new Throne Speech and offered a saleable enough rationale for why he’s done it — the pandemic.
What happens when Parliament returns? Although it had been the Bloc threatening to force a non-confidence vote earlier this summer, the positions of the other main opposition parties are key. On one hand, a new leader at the helm of a fundraising-fattened party and a rejuvenated base will give the Conservatives more bounce than they have had in ages, and perhaps enough swagger to force an election. On the other hand, the Liberals are well poised to continue their squeeze play on the NDP, tilting further left on policy to render the party led by
Jagmeet Singh irrelevant in a battle of right-left ideology in English Canada.
If it is their fate for Canadians to vote for a second time in a year, left-of-centre voters will no longer labour under the misapprehension that Justin Trudeau is some apparition of ethical seraphim, sent from the heavens to do politics differently.
They know what he is. They’ll know what he’s offering. Freeland unveiled a key piece of it Thursday: a $37-billion package to extend CERB (the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) by another month and an overhauled employment insurance plan.
In the absence of a more appealing alternative, centrist voters are unlikely to leave Trudeau. So once again, the pressure will be on the CPC to change that dynamic and convince pandemic-weary swing voters they do indeed have a choice. The NHL playoffs won’t last forever. At least politics will give coronavirus-weary Canadians something else to talk about.
Shachi Kurl is executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.