Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada are facing uncertainty and worries regarding their future in politics after losing a long-standing Liberal riding in the Toronto area. According to sources who spoke with Radio-Canada, Trudeau’s team called caucus members on Tuesday to get their opinions on the party’s course following the unexpected defeat in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
Is there anything the Liberals can do right now to win back support from the public, though, given that Trudeau has reiterated his intention to continue in office and that numerous polls indicate Canadians are sick of him and his party? After observing the Liberals’ declining polling scores over the past year, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto remarked, “I don’t think there’s anything he can do.”
He did opine that other influences, like the U.S. presidential contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in November, would persuade people to reconsider the Liberals. “There’s external events that could force voters to evaluate him differently,” he stated. “With many political leaders, I believe the pandemic did that. It was a catastrophe that made us reevaluate how we perceived our leaders.
The Liberals may benefit if other outside occurrences, such as a summer of wildfires, bring the topic of climate change back to light, according to Dan Arnold, chief strategic officer of the polling company Pollara. He added that these outside happenings are unexpected. Arnold, a former director of research and advertising for the Liberals, proposed that the party shift the focus and attempt to influence the discourse by looking instead to history.
Pollster: “Very hard” to change negative perceptions
According to Coletto, the Toronto-St. Paul results, along with a year of low Liberal polling numbers, show that people are dissatisfied with the country’s current course and want change. “I believe the public’s opinion of the prime minister is set. And if people have a bad opinion of you or anything else, it’s incredibly difficult to get them to change it, especially if the person trying to persuade them otherwise is someone they don’t really like,” he said.
Arnold expressed his doubts that a reorganization of the prime minister’s inner circle or a shift of the cabinet would alter these opinions. “Who the heritage minister is is probably not going to have a huge impact on Canadians,” he stated.
