Trudeau's Unpopularity is Sign of Something Bigger
I’ll admit that I haven’t been paying enough attention to Canadian politics. As an American, I am guilty of making all things political about me. I have been focused on the disastrous last eight years the United States has been having and have just assumed that our steady neighbors would “keep calm and carry on” and hold things down on a sensible note for our continent. It looks like our friends in the North are having some trouble, too.
Now, the ever-growing unpopularity of Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau is getting too substantial to overlook. The last time I checked, I thought we could count on Canada yet again for some stability in a time of American political upheaval. The risk of losing our emotional support country is too overwhelming, and I think it’s time to take a closer look to discern what is really happening in Canada — to try not to make it all about us, as Americans are wont to do.
Justin Trudeau has been serving as the 23rd prime minister of Canada since 2015, and has acted as the leader of the Liberal Party since 2013. William Lyon Mackenzie King is Canada's longest-serving prime minister, holding office for a total of nearly 22 years, over three non-consecutive terms. He lead the country through industrialization, the Great Depression, and World War II. It seems the notion of steady leadership worked for King in a time of great turmoil, but now the people of Canada appear to be restless under the banner of a stale economy. Sound familiar?
During the first Trump administration (and yes, it hurt like hell to type out “first”there), I remember relying heavily on the notion of Canadian stability to get us through those tumultuous four years. At that time, Trudeau was like a breath of fresh air for Americans — a steady, rational representation of how people had been choosing politicians for years. He was a brilliant and reassuring counterpart for the instability and short fuse that Donald Trump showed the world on a daily basis. Even Melania Trump appeared to be distracted for a moment by Justin Trudeau and all of his sparkly promise.
Now, Trudeau’s unpopularity appears to be a common feature of Canadian politics, and I have to admit it couldn’t come at a worse time for the United States. In late July of this year, just as President Biden was making the decision to step down in the next election with a proverbial political gun held to his head, an Abacus Data/Toronto Star poll attempted to pinpoint where the Trudeau antipathy was rooted, and whether it was based on something he had done, or on his long tenure.
The poll was conducted online with 2,000 Canadian adults from July 16 to 22 of this year. The top two reasons cited for negative impressions of Trudeau were disappointment in what he’s done, with 59% saying that was the prominent reason, and his management of the federal budget, with 55% saying that was the major reason for their dislike of Trudeau. In this poll, 77% cited his weakness as a leader, and 66% said they were simply tired of him. Sound familiar?
Abacus offered respondents a choice of 11 ways to describe why they were rating Trudeau so negatively and the answers included his foreign, social and climate policies and a sense that he’s “out of touch,” or the regard in which he is held by other world leaders. While it may be true that Justin Trudeau was not keeping Canada as visible as the country would have liked with regard to global politics, the phrase “out of touch” feels like code for a young man that is not acting modern or virile enough.
The following is a portion from an article in the Toronto Star, entitled, “Don’t like Justin Trudeau? You’re not alone. Here’s why Canadians say the prime minister is so unpopular,” published in July of this year:
“Abacus asked these respondents whether there was any scenario in which they would vote for a Trudeau-led Liberal party. The number one reason cited was Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives doing something that makes people “really uncomfortable” with the prospect of them in government. About one quarter of these open-to-change voters gave that reason; another one quarter cited better economic conditions.”
The threat of an extreme candidate representing the Conservative Party in Canada seems to be the only thing holding the Canadian electorate at bay in terms of a complete overhaul of the government. We can all agree that the case of Donald Trump and his popularity in the United States is something that mirrors the Conservative movement all over the world (think France and Marie LePen).
As a rational American — who understands that the argument of a “bad economy” is used as a war cry to justify the election of far-right leaders who are wholly concerned with race under the banner of a culture war — I can clearly see the dangerous path that Canada appears to be taking. The problem in all of this is that there are legitimate economic concerns that are being bastardized by politicians who are intent on resurrecting fascism and making it a staple of 2025.
If Canada is truly headed down the same Nazi brick road upon which the United States has started, then America is hardly in a position to lend support or help our neighbors and steer them away from this eventuality. It’s fair to say that the democratic strongholds of the world have now been weakened. Democracy has been purposely diluted by charismatic alt-right leaders, who have successfully sold their economic outrage on the faulty premise of a culture wars claim. When you boil all of this down to its finest point, it is really nothing but plain old racism. Sound familiar?
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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Be very careful with your interpretation of what the media present. There is a hell of a fan club for Trudeau. The media are disinformationing with emphasis and have been for some time. You should be well familiar with this because that’s what’s happening elsewhere in the world. This is the Putin agenda. The right wing fascism that’s backing the Conservative candidate that we - many of us -despise is the same agenda that you suffer from with Trumpism. It would not matter right now if Trudeau was Hercules. The media has been bought. They will take Trudeau down, no matter what he does or who he is.
Trump is, after all, a cancer. His openly expressed affinity, if not love, for dictators, Putin in the lead, is now evident worldwide and, like metastatic cancer, this expressed love is being expressed in other nations. The US's leadership on democracy has always been fragile, but now that it looks very much like we are headed into a time of oligarchy, evangelicalism, and intolerance, not to mention straight-up graft, other countries are pushing up their own versions of Trump. We do have influence worldwide; if no one believed it before, believe it now.