As the House of Commons resumes business for the fall session, support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government has hit a “new low,” new polls show.
According to an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released Monday, just over a third of Canadians (33 per cent) approve of Trudeau’s government. That approval rating is down four points since Ipsos last conducted a similar poll in June.
Darrell Bricker, global executive director of public affairs at Ipsos, said it’s not just the government’s message that’s unappealing to voters, but the messenger himself, Trudeau.
“What we’ve heard from the administration is that they were going to try to improve their popularity and their approval rating over the summer, and that clearly hasn’t happened,” Bricker said in an interview with Global News.
“In fact, we have seen the numbers go in the complete opposite direction since June,” he said.
Meanwhile, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has led in the polls for more than a year, was the favourite of 45 per cent of Canadians polled by Ipsos, who said he would be “Canada’s best prime minister.”
Fewer Canadians felt the same way about the incumbent leader, however: just 26 per cent said Trudeau was their first choice for prime minister. New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh was not far behind, with 23 per cent of Canadians supporting him.
Nationally, only six percent voted for Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet.
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The poll comes as MPs return to the House of Commons on Monday in a significantly changed political landscape, particularly after the New Democrats pulled out of a confidence and supply deal with the Liberals.
Bricker said that given the decline in support for the Liberals shown in polls, ““There is an incentive for opposition parties to negotiate very hard with the government, without fear of an election.”
Voters in two Canadian electoral districts, one in Quebec and one in Manitoba, will also go to the polls on Monday.
In Quebec, the Liberals hope to retain the riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, which became vacant when former Justice Minister David Lametti resigned from politics. The riding has been Liberal red since its creation in 2013 and its first election in 2015, which brought the Liberals to power.
In Manitoba, the NDP is hoping to keep the riding of Elmwood-Transcona in Orange hands after three-term MP Daniel Blaikie resigned.
What are the main concerns of Canadians?
Economic issues are a priority for Canadians.
In the Ipsos poll, 47 per cent said they want Canada’s elected officials to focus on reducing the cost of everyday items, such as food, this fall.
More than a third (36 percent) also want MPs to prioritise inflation and interest rates.
The annual inflation rate slowed to 2.5% in July, according to Statistics Canada’s latest report for August. That was the slowest pace of price growth since March 2021.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada has cut its key interest rate in three consecutive decisions, taking it to 4.25 percent earlier this month.
Affordable housing (28 percent) and immigration (25 percent) were also among the top five concerns of Canadians, according to Ipsos.
In preparation for the return of Parliament, the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois met last week to discuss their fall strategy.
Speaking to reporters in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on Sept. 11, Trudeau said he was gearing up and ready to take on Poilievre.
“I can’t wait to continue working on this this fall with Pierre Poilievre, whose view is that cuts are the only way forward, because I know confident countries invest in the future,” Trudeau said.
Poilievre has pledged to table a vote of no confidence in the Liberal government “as soon as possible” in the House of Commons and has directly challenged Singh to vote with him.
These are some of the results of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 5-9, 2024, on behalf of Global News. For this poll, a sample of 1,001 Canadians aged 18 or older were interviewed. Quotas and weightings were used to ensure that the composition of the sample reflected that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The accuracy of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, if all Canadians aged 18 or older had been surveyed. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample polls and surveys may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to, coverage error and measurement error.
— with files from Sean Previl of Global News and The Canadian Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
