Let us be clear. Nobody, and no government, is perfect. And any government that has been in office for nine years is bound to be seen as approaching its ‘best before’ date, no matter how much it has achieved during that time. This timeline appears to be an immutable law of electoral politics in liberal democracies everywhere, and is certainly the case in Canada.[i] So, even if several extraordinary developments had not taken place over the past two years, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau would likely have been on shaky ground by now. Indeed, even without the parliamentary circus of the past few weeks a Liberal Party leadership race could well have been taking place this spring, and an election called sooner than October. Fair enough and not at all surprising.
What is surprising, and highly disconcerting to students of Canadian politics, is the hyperpartisan political discourse and extremely polarized nature of Canadian society that has evolved over the past few years. Perhaps even more important is the extreme level of personal animosity and disdain directed at this government and this prime minister — by opposition parties, by many provincial premiers and by most of the mainstream media, to say nothing of the appalling level of vitriol spewing from social media.
Expert observers point out that this outright hostility is not only unprecedented, but quite possibly dangerous to the health of liberal democracy. Not even the governments of Brian Mulroney, or R.B. Bennett many decades earlier, (two of the most unpopular Canadian prime ministers before now), were subject to this kind of constant negative coverage and personal attacks that we have been seeing for the better part of the past two years. There were no large contingents of unruly protesters following those earlier prime ministers around, wearing Tshirts that said the equivalent of “F—k Trudeau.” Nor were wild-eyed rogue males accosting a diminutive female Finance minister in the elevator of her hotel, threatening other female MPs or forming intimidating groups at MPs’ constituency offices or on Parliament Hill, following and harassing cabinet ministers making their way to the House of Commons.[ii]’s Nor have earlier premiers of Alberta, however much they wanted to defend that province’s interests, referred as Danielle Smith has to “Ottawa’s unhinged agenda” against her province, or refused, as Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe has, to obey a federal law because he dislikes it.
In this extraordinary context there can be little doubt that the upcoming federal election is going to take place in uncharted waters in terms of the volatile public mood and increasingly negative attitudes towards politicians and the institutions of democratic governance. In 1984, prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s resignation after a decade in power led to his successor John Turner’s decisive loss to Brian Mulroney. Ten years later Mulroney’s successor Kim Campbell went down to ignominious defeat to Jean Chretien. And a decade later still, Chretien’s successor Paul Martin lost to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But the election campaigns themselves were civil, fought mostly on issues and policies, not personalities, and the transitions were relatively seamless. By contrast, there is something qualitatively different about the current scenario, even though it looks superficially the same. Justin Trudeau has set in motion the process to select his successor and prepare for the next election, which his Liberal Party is most likely to lose to the Poilievre Conservatives. Why does this not feel like deja vu all over again? What is different?
A large part of the answer appears to lie with the advent of three extraordinary and almost simultaneous developments. It is no coincidence that the dramatic decline in support for the Trudeau Liberals, and their growing “demonization”, only began in the second half of 2022,[iii] and the origins of this decline — and the vicious personal nature of it — can be traced quite clearly to these developments, two of which have been international in scope :
- the widespread negative economic impact and disruptions from the global pandemic and
- the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine which has destabilized much else in the established order of the western world.[iv]
Needless to say, these international factors are beyond the control of any national government, and even of concerted action by multinational bodies such as the WTO and the IMF. Put another way, virtually every western economy has been hit by the same supply chain issues, interest rate increases, housing and employment problems, and growing societal inequality that have plagued Canada as the world emerged from the pandemic. And this global economic disruption has been deepened by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has further damaged national economies and created uncertainty in international markets.
It is becoming a truism that any government that was in power during the pandemic has paid the price of these post-pandemic disruptions in the form of massive citizen dissatisfaction at the polls. In 2024, a year in which most of the western liberal democracies were scheduled to hold elections, governing parties of all political stripes were blamed for forces largely beyond their control and thrown under the electoral bus. Clearly this trend could also be seen to apply to the Trudeau Liberals, who were already in power at the start of the pandemic.
Nevertheless, and although this is cold comfort to those most affected by current cost-of-living issues, it is true that the Canadian economy has weathered this post-pandemic fallout better than any of our fellow G-7 partners and Canada is actually expected to lead the G7 in growth in 2025.[v] Put another way, in a more rational political climate it would at least be recognized that the federal Liberal government’s policies have been reasonably successful in mitigating against some of the worst effects of this extraordinary pair of external events. Indeed, as one economist has recently pointed out, “Canadians actually became wealthier under Trudeau.”[i] Even former PBO Kevin Page praised Trudeau’s handling of the pandemic and for achieving a “soft landing” for the economy afterwards, declaring the Liberals’ overall economic legacy to be very “positive on balance.”
It is also difficult to reconcile the current vitriolic resentment of the Trudeau Liberals with the widespread popular support for that government’s various public health policies during the pandemic, policies that were designed to keep Canadians healthy and that succeeded in doing so to a very great degree. Indeed, at the height of the crisis, fully two thirds of Canadians declared the Liberals were doing a very good job at managing the pandemic[vi] and global statistics prove this to be true. Canada had the lowest death rate and fewest total cases of all G7 countries except Japan, a country which did only marginally better despite the pre-existing advantage of a traditional mask-wearing culture. Yet now, only two years into a post-pandemic era, it appears that nearly 40% of Canadians feel the government “over-reacted” to the crisis and are likely to be less willing to follow directives in the case of a future threat.[ii]
Despite this, it is clear that many Canadians are feeling the same level of discontent with their government as their counterparts elsewhere. But while these external factors go some way towards explaining the steeply plummeting popularity of the Liberals over the past two years, they do not provide any rationale for the deeply personal and vitriolic level of resentment found among a significant portion of the electorate. It is the third and strictly domestic factor that must assume much of the blame for this unfortunate new trend, namely the election of Pierre Poilievre as leader of the Conservative Party in the fall of 2022. The man once known as “Harper’s pitbull” has made a career out of aggressive attack-style politics, and becoming leader of the Official Opposition has not caused him to modify his approach. On the contrary, he has made extensive use of social media, in what has now come to be called “permanent campaign” mode, to not simply criticize but attack and ridicule the prime minister and his government continuously.
Of course the very existence of social media and other new technology has greatly facilitated the spread of misinformation and disinformation in recent years. Scholars now routinely write major treatises on the negative impact of these largely unregulated communications platforms on the operation of civil society and political systems. And certainly these media have played a key role in whipping up the current level of manic resentment of the federal Liberal government. Nevertheless, these new media must be seen as a tool, not the source of this problem.
Almost from the day that he was first selected, Pierre Poilievre has made a point of doubling down on his trademark unfounded attacks, misleading statements and snide allusions through the skillful use of social media. He has repeatedly accused the prime minister of lying, and even of being a traitor to Canada. Like his American role model, Donald Trump, there appear to be few if any social mores or conventions, or elements of civility, that he is unwilling to transcend. As one political commentator concluded, in many cases the attacks seem to be the only point Poilievre is trying to make:
“Has any Canadian politician in recent memory embraced rhetorical conflict as enthusiastically as Pierre Poilievre? For the Conservative leader, there seems to be no such thing as overstatement. And he seems to feel it’s almost always worth going on the attack.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Parliament Hill in August, he used the word disastrous multiple times. He said Chrystia Freeland was incompetent and discredited and deemed her Canada’s worst ever finance minister. He said Housing Minister Sean Fraser — whom Poilievre described previously as the worst immigration minister in Canadian history — had destroyed the immigration system in his previous portfolio. He called Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault crazy.
He said the government had unleashed crime and chaos across the country. A fan of alliteration, Poilievre has also accused the Liberals of propagating drugs and disorder,death and destruction and housing hell. He has said the federal carbon tax is an existential threat to our economy and our way of life and claims it will lead to mass hunger and malnutrition. Last November, he described the government’s economic plan update as a “disgusting scheme”[iii] “
Note that his type of personal criticism is content-free. Poilievre does not have to address any of the challenging issues facing the country in any meaningful way. He simply dismisses the actions of his opponents but offers no positive alternatives, or indeed any alternatives at all. At best, he offers up meaningless slogans. And, less than a day after the prime minister’s announcement that he will be stepping down, Poilievre and his team have already begun turning their personal animosity on any potential successors, and indeed on all Liberals everywhere.
Canadians may be fed up and ready to “throw the bums out”, but they are not likely to have any idea what they will be replacing them with, and this election is likely to be a political brawl, not an exchange of views and ideas. As Donald Trump is already demonstrating south of the border before he is even sworn in, voters should be careful what they wish for.
[i] https://www.thestar.com/business/say-what-you-want-about-justin-trudeau-theres-still-no-arguing-canadians-became-wealthier-while/article_bd6afbaa-cc3c-11ef-8a5a-b7468842b9a6.html
[ii] https://brookejeffrey.ca/pandemic-what-pandemic/
[iii] (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2110718/for-pierre-poilievre-the-conflict-appears-to-be-the-
[i] . (Pierre Trudeau (1968-79) Brian Mulroney (1984-93) Jean Chretien (1993 -2003) and Stephen Harper (2006-2015)
[ii] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/threats-harassment-mps-spike-1.7217040 and https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harassment-women-public-life-journalists-politicians-1.6564376
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_Canadian_federal_election
[iv] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/07/25/global-economy-on-track-but-not-yet-out-of-the-woods
[v] https://financialpost.com/news/imf-forecasts-canada-fastest-growing-economy-g7-2025
[vi] https://angusreid.org/federal-politics-covid-november/
