Boomers keep Trudeau in power
Despite stereotypes that old age turns progressives into ornery conservatives, the exact opposite seems true in Canada. Justin Trudeau won his 2015 majority thanks in large part to young people who voted for him, but those voters soon became disillusioned. Since then, many polls suggest baby boomers are Trudeau's most reliable demographic, whose loyalty might be based on his surname, not his policies. For many of the same people who still attend Elvis impersonator concerts, the first Trudeaumania never died.
Trudeau Jr. had a coalition of age brackets behind him in 2015, but an EKOS poll last week showed a plurality of Canadians under 50 currently favour the Conservatives, while those 50 and older, especially those 65 and older, stubbornly prefer the Liberals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the senior citizen preference for the Liberals is the strongest in the Laurentian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Less than one in five Canadians aged 18-34 in the poll would vote Liberal in the next election. Considering most of those aged 50 and up grew up in a transformative era of Liberal political dominance, their disposition is somewhat understandable.
In C2C Journal last year, writer John Wesseinberger detailed how Liberal Prime Ministers Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau spearheaded the demise of British Canada in the 1960s, ushering in the modern, multicultural country that exists today. It was a partisan transition. The Progressive Conservatives opposed Pearson's replacement of the Red Ensign as Canada's flag. It was also Pearson who officially adopted “O Canada” as the national anthem over “God Save the Queen.”
On the economic side, Pearson and Trudeau Sr. gleefully laid the foundations of the Liberal preference for a massive federal government. It conditioned a whole generation to reflexively equate budget deficits with virtuous governance. As that generation came to love the charismatic Trudeau Sr. in the 1970s, some discovered and learned to love the internet in the 2000s, where today, they spread their obsolete political gospel. They are Canada's equivalent of conservative Americans of similar ages, who vote for any Republican that invokes the name Ronald Reagan.
A strange obsession of Trudeau supporters is the alleged Tory plot to privatize the health care system, legislated into existence by Pearson. During the near-decade of Stephen Harper's Conservative government, health care was never privatized, but the canard endured.
The health care system they defend is among the worst performing in the civilized world. Family doctors are rare, and wait times are nightmarish. If it continues to deteriorate, people won't want to keep it in 20 years. Much of this can ironically be blamed on Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, who doubled-down on the Mulroney government's cuts to medical school enrolments in the 1990s. No other party did more to shrink Trudeau Sr.'s vision of Canada than his own Liberals, who in the same decade, enacted the biggest budget cuts in Canadian history.
Nonetheless, many boomers remain devoted to the Liberal party of their youth, though one wonders whether it is driven more by cultish nostalgia than policy. Trudeau Jr. proudly admitted his candidacy was all about his father during his 2013 Liberal leadership campaign, a clear wink to those who remember his father fondly. Considering the narrow Liberal victories in the 2019 and 2021 elections, Trudeau Jr. might have lost both without the House of Trudeau's greying faithful.
Those qualities remain a mystery to most people. Canada is not a better place than it was seven years ago. Health care is worse, housing is far worse, inflation is high, and many immigrants are considering leaving the country within a few years due to the increased difficulty of living here.
What will happen to the Liberal party when that nostalgic generation isn't voting anymore? What will happen when someone named Trudeau doesn't lead it? It took 100 years for British Canada to be replaced by Liberal Canada in the 1960s. The country is due for a cultural and political shift. Some Trudeau boomers may just live long enough to discover that the version of Canada they cling to was not to last forever.