Juno News - Justin Trudeau is losing young voters (ft. Sabrina Maddeaux)

00:00:00.000 You don't hear me talk about polling often on the show because nine times out of 10,

00:00:11.720 in fact, I'd say 19 times out of 20 to use the polling language, it is utterly meaningless.

00:00:17.020 It may give you a snapshot of time, but it is subject to all of these different inputs

00:00:21.840 that more importantly are not necessarily going to be there nationally and not when

00:00:26.740 there is an election day. But when you see a poll show you something so continuously,

00:00:31.340 you should probably start paying attention to what it's saying. And we've seen that the

00:00:35.500 conservatives have not just been riding high in the polls for several weeks and several months,

00:00:40.000 but they've been doing it with a level of consistency that we've not seen in many,

00:00:44.340 many years. And they've also been doing it across demographic groups, specifically among youth.

00:00:50.600 This has always been the group that conservatives have the hardest time breaking through to. But

00:00:55.640 one poll I'll show you right now from Abacus, which breaks down voting intention by generation,

00:01:02.000 shows the conservatives winning across the board. But look at every single demographic group. They

00:01:07.640 are winning among boomers. They're winning among Gen X, which is the friends generation,

00:01:12.800 which shockingly is now over 50, but I apologize for pointing that out. Millennials,

00:01:17.380 they're winning even among Gen Z, the youngest generation of voters. The conservatives are still

00:01:22.980 winning, not as much as they are in other groups, but 30% as opposed to 26, 25, and then all of the

00:01:29.280 lower vote shares. So this is something that the liberals have as a big problem, because if Justin

00:01:35.060 Trudeau can't rely on the youth vote, which he always thought he could take for granted, there's no way

00:01:40.240 they can win an election, certainly not a majority. So what is it that the conservatives are doing that's

00:01:46.240 capturing this generation, that's capturing this demographic? I want to bring into the show Sabrina

00:01:52.300 Madoe, who is a fantastic columnist with the National Post and pops up in all fora, in media,

00:01:58.360 in writing, in video. It's great to talk to her. Sabrina, thanks so much for coming on today.

00:02:03.680 Thanks for having me.

00:02:04.920 So let's talk about the millennial aspect here, because this has always been the group that tends

00:02:09.720 to be kind of crapped on as a demographic cohort. And I think the older you get, the broader millennial

00:02:16.320 becomes. So people say basically think anyone under 40 is a millennial now, which isn't entirely true.

00:02:21.140 But it is a generation that's had a lot of issues with housing, that's had a lot of issues with

00:02:26.440 finding work, that's had a lot of these challenges that are really being tackled by Pierre Polyevre right

00:02:32.320 now. And do you think it's that simple that, you know, this is a generation that says the status quo

00:02:36.300 has failed them? Pierre Polyevre is talking about it. And that's why they're leaning conservative.

00:02:42.080 I'd go further than saying the status quo has failed them. The liberals under Trudeau have

00:02:46.400 specifically failed them. And as we know, millennials were a huge part of Trudeau's win back in 2015,

00:02:52.200 and even to a lesser extent in 2019 and 2021. But now we're seeing huge shifts. A recent abacus poll

00:02:59.880 showed in the 18 to 34 demographic, the CPC is up 10 points. Now they took the same poll

00:03:06.120 right after the 2021 election. And it was the liberals up seven points in that demographic.

00:03:12.120 So that's a 17 point swing, which is hugely significant. And we haven't seen young people

00:03:17.340 in Canada turn to the conservatives in these sorts of numbers in, well, my lifetime for sure,

00:03:22.780 but perhaps ever. Yeah. And I think that basically there is a lot of vote parking that we see in

00:03:29.340 polling, which is why I get nervous about polls that take place a lengthy period before an election

00:03:34.400 where someone gets a phone call about an election that they're not even thinking of. And they sort

00:03:38.320 of blurt out what they think at the moment, which might not carry to the election. But in this case,

00:03:42.940 I don't think that's what's happening here. Because I think people in general are in a bit of a crisis

00:03:47.480 point here. You have the housing issue is probably the best example of this. And I also look at Gen

00:03:54.960 Xers, which are very heavily skewed to the conservatives in this poll. They're the people that are getting to 1.00

00:04:00.540 that point where they're starting to think about what their Gen Z or Gen Z kids are going to be

00:04:05.400 doing in two, three, four years. So you can actually see why boomers, which have always been 0.99

00:04:09.880 the conservative loyalists, are the ones that are actually most suited to voting liberal right now,

00:04:15.700 because they're the ones that really have the least to lose as far as all of the things we're

00:04:20.340 talking about. Absolutely. It's been millennials and Gen Z who have taken the brunt of a lot of the

00:04:26.500 inequality that popped out over the pandemic and over Trudeau's eight years in government,

00:04:31.360 whether it's housing, we have two generations, probably another one coming up that's locked out

00:04:36.700 of homeownership, not just homeownership, but affordable rentals. They are having to move to

00:04:41.820 other provinces, even other countries lose their social ties, just to be able to afford a place to

00:04:47.380 live. Affordability inflation is also impacting them and their wages in the prime of their careers.

00:04:54.100 And in terms of the pandemic, we saw that the measures brought in, the lockdowns had a really

00:05:00.020 disproportionate mental health effect on young people as well. So you combine all of these things

00:05:04.920 together. And there are a lot of hot button issues where young people are very, very frustrated and

00:05:10.700 they want change. And I think that's part of it. So those are the issues that are impacting the

00:05:15.140 millennial and Gen Z vote. But there's also a personality, personal component with Trudeau. When we look at

00:05:21.220 polling, millennials are saying, we dislike Trudeau a lot more than we actually dislike the liberal

00:05:27.940 party. So they feel a particular sense of betrayal and disillusionment from him. And that's what makes

00:05:34.480 this election so key. And especially the decision of whether Trudeau decides to run again, because a lot

00:05:41.600 of these voters will be potentially voting conservative for the first time. And we know when people cast a ballot

00:05:47.160 for a party, they're more likely to do so again. And we know after they've cast a ballot for the same

00:05:51.660 party twice, that often becomes a lifetime pattern. So this is a really big change election, not

00:05:57.140 potentially just for right now, but decades down the road and could spell a lot of trouble, perhaps

00:06:02.440 the end of the liberal party.

00:06:03.840 I know the poll that I was referencing, another polling doesn't go into the motivation necessarily,

00:06:10.000 it just talks about that surface level vote intention. But I wanted to try to dig a little

00:06:14.980 bit beyond that. There's that apocryphal Churchill quote, which Churchill never actually said, but I

00:06:19.580 think is nonetheless a useful quote that, you know, if you're not a liberal by 20, you have no heart. If

00:06:24.600 you're not a conservative by 40, you have no brain. And there are variations of that, like, you know, 25 and

00:06:29.340 50, 30 and 50. But basically, the whole point is that you're expected to be a leftist when you're

00:06:33.640 young. And then when you grow up and have responsibilities, you're going to be more

00:06:37.080 conservative. And I'm wondering if we can draw from this polling, any sense of an ideological

00:06:43.040 shift? Do we think young people are inherently becoming more conservative because of the realities

00:06:48.220 of the world? Or do we think it is just something as superficial as vote choice or vote preference?

00:06:53.900 I think the reality, the economic realities are what are pushing them to fiscal conservatism,

00:06:58.480 as long with along with seeing what the spending impact by the liberals has had on their lives,

00:07:03.580 the inflationary impact, the way it's fueled housing to such an extreme, extreme bubble.

00:07:10.280 So they've really come into realizing the economic benefits of conservatism at a much younger age

00:07:16.620 than their predecessors and other generations. Usually when you talk about you become a conservative

00:07:21.260 around 40, why is that? You probably own a home, you have children, you're starting your family,

00:07:26.040 you're in the prime of your career. So those economic considerations tend to become more

00:07:30.160 important. But we're in such an economically disastrous place right now, particularly for

00:07:35.200 our youth, that they're having that realization a heck of a lot earlier. And when it comes to the

00:07:40.840 social issues that fueled Trudeau into office and initially got him their support, it's hard

00:07:47.640 to care too much about some of these social justice issues up in the sky when you can't afford rent,

00:07:53.100 you can't afford groceries, you can't afford to have children. You're looking at maybe even living

00:07:57.880 on the street. That's a core issue. When you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that's like number

00:08:03.180 one, how do I live and how do I eat? And they're realizing they can't do that under Trudeau's liberals.

00:08:09.420 Yeah, I think immigration is a great example of that. And I know you had a column about this a month ago

00:08:14.280 that I thought was quite poignant. And you talk about how when people see the rising, rising numbers

00:08:20.740 of immigration and also rising, rising house costs, house cost issues and declining supply,

00:08:26.540 it's not hard to draw a line between these two. And the liberals have always been very hesitant to do

00:08:32.100 so. In fact, they've continued to say we need more immigrants, you know, getting up to 500,000 a year.

00:08:37.840 But even this week, the liberals have appeared to see a little bit of pushback on that. All of these

00:08:43.920 columnists that are, I'd say, not at all conservative are starting to point out, okay,

00:08:48.220 maybe we're overdoing it on immigration when we have this crisis point on housing. And then you throw

00:08:53.600 in international students into the mix, we're looking at about 900,000 this year, which even

00:08:59.260 if this is not all permanent residents, that's 900,000 people that will need to be housed and will

00:09:03.440 need to live in this country for at least a few years. And I'm wondering where you think that is

00:09:09.820 going to go because the conservatives right now are in a bit of a bind because they don't want to

00:09:14.580 be the anti-immigrant party, which is, I think, feeding into the most inhospitable portrayals

00:09:19.860 of them. But I also think public opinion is turning on this issue right now.

00:09:24.620 It is. We've seen in polls that now 11% of Canadians, according to advocates, say immigration is one of

00:09:30.900 their top three issues. 63% say that the current levels of immigration are tied into higher housing costs.

00:09:37.540 And 61% actually say they think the Liberals' current immigration targets are too high.

00:09:43.660 And the reason why it's becoming an undeniable issue is because if you look at a chart that shows

00:09:48.920 the spike in huge immigration versus the spike in house prices, you can see there is a connection.

00:09:55.100 They both begin to spike at the same time. And I think it needs to be made clear by anyone who

00:10:00.760 speaks about this issue that this isn't immigrant faults themselves. This is not an immigrant problem.

00:10:07.140 It's a systemic problem in terms of our government hasn't decided to think about the infrastructure,

00:10:12.580 the supports, the housing behind having these numbers. And of course, immigrants are important

00:10:17.380 to society and bring a lot of benefits in many different ways. But we need to be able to both

00:10:23.300 support them and support the current population for this to be sustainable. Because in a worst case

00:10:28.420 scenario, if we don't do that, we've seen it in other societies, people become resentful,

00:10:33.300 anti-immigrant sentiment grows. And that is the last thing that we want to see. The Liberals talk

00:10:38.340 about sustainability in many other areas. They should be thinking about whether their immigration

00:10:43.120 policy is sustainable.

00:10:45.460 Yeah, I mean, to use a crass example, if a bar opens the doors and lets a certain number of people in,

00:10:51.380 and everyone there finds it's too packed and too busy, it's the fault of the people that opened the

00:10:55.040 doors that didn't say, okay, maybe we need to, you know, reduce this capacity here. And I think that

00:10:59.880 that's to go back to your Maslow's hierarchy parallel, which I thought was a very good one.

00:11:04.020 This is kind of the problem here is that the Liberals viewed immigration as being a moral issue,

00:11:08.480 not an economic issue. And they wanted to get that big arbitrary number. I mean, 500,000 is just this

00:11:14.840 grand arbitrary number. But in practice, there are very real implications to that increase. And this is

00:11:22.120 where we have an example of they're skipping right ahead to self-actualization. Well, the people in this

00:11:27.140 country already, immigrant and native-born, can't afford a home. 1.00

00:11:31.560 Absolutely. And, you know, it's often newcomers who suffer the brunt of this even more than

00:11:35.960 Canadians who are already settled here, especially when-

00:11:39.140 I mean, just to interrupt, they're going to the most expensive cities, typically. Like,

00:11:42.100 they're not, you know, settling in Canada and going to Red Deer. They're going to Vancouver,

00:11:45.400 Toronto.

00:11:46.740 Absolutely. And when they're international students, which right now is open-ended, and I believe,

00:11:51.060 I just saw that we're expecting 900,000 international students to come in this year.

00:11:55.680 Last year, it was only 550,000. And the fact that I'm saying only, that's with a big asterisk.

00:12:01.160 But they, we've seen the areas around colleges and universities have seen some of the most dramatic

00:12:07.260 rent increases. London, Ontario, which is a big college town, has seen an 86% increase in the rent

00:12:14.520 of one bedroom since 2019. And they've seen 20% increases summer over summer. We hear stories now

00:12:22.440 where students and international students, they're going to food banks. They're living in tents.

00:12:27.360 There have been stories this week about parents having to rent out parking spaces for their kids

00:12:33.100 to live in a van. And they're setting up a heater because that's the only place they can afford to be

00:12:37.280 in and attend the school they want to attend. When it comes to international students, this makes

00:12:41.960 them ripe for exploitation. There's been issues with students falling into sex trafficking because they

00:12:48.600 get put in these terrible situations where they say, you want to make rent? You want a place under

00:12:52.780 your home? I know you're vulnerable. And who are you going to report to? Because they're afraid that

00:12:57.860 they'll be sent back home. So this issue is really, it's a predatory system for everyone. And it's

00:13:04.020 absolutely not a moral immigration system. And it needs to be fixed. It needs to be reconsidered.

00:13:09.380 Yeah, I mean, I'm from London, Ontario. And we have a very large university. We have a very large

00:13:15.780 college as well. India, in particular, supplies massive numbers of international students that go

00:13:22.340 to both of those schools. And, you know, a lot of them are here for all the right reasons. They're not

00:13:27.060 the problem. And there have been so many stories, though, in the last few years of, for example,

00:13:32.040 apartments that have been rented out above capacity, where you're shoving people into these like closets in

00:13:37.300 a basement with no windows, which is illegal and renting it out as a room. And that's something

00:13:41.280 that people take. And if you order, you know, DoorDash or Uber Eats in London, more often than

00:13:46.300 not, you're going to get a foreign student there. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

00:13:50.180 It's a perfectly legitimate way to earn a living. But I know they're not making a lot of money. And

00:13:54.620 you have problems in London. I mean, I know both the university and the college have had to invest in

00:13:59.740 student food banks. So there is a sustainability issue here that no one is speaking about.

00:14:04.080 Yeah, we've essentially allowed our student permits to become untapped low wage permits. And this was

00:14:11.740 especially through when the Liberals opened up for students to be able to work as many hours as they

00:14:17.400 want when they come here. And also, they're allowing these essentially what are diploma mills to function.

00:14:23.780 And these are schools that are bringing in students. They often don't even really have classrooms or they

00:14:29.940 don't have classrooms that are big enough to accommodate all the students they've allowed in.

00:14:33.780 They provide no sort of student housing. And it's just a pathway into the country where then these 1.00

00:14:39.060 students end up working low wage jobs and often living in really poor conditions. So we don't even

00:14:44.180 need to necessarily be talking about a cap on the number of international students. But we should talk about

00:14:49.200 making sure that when we issue student permits, students are coming here mostly to study to get an

00:14:54.600 education and to better their lives as well as contribute to the Canadian economy. So that can

00:15:01.080 be done by linking the number of permits each institution gets to spaces in a classroom or perhaps

00:15:07.160 amount of housing they can provide. Perhaps even rolling back the number of hours that students can

00:15:12.840 work per week so that they can really focus on obtaining those degrees or education that they're here to

00:15:17.880 get. So there are many different ways this can be approached. And again, it needs to be a conversation

00:15:23.740 that's definitely not anti-international student or anti-immigration, but it's really about common

00:15:28.880 sense and sustainability because this isn't a problem we want to get worth. Yeah, you raise a few

00:15:35.220 important points there on the hours worked. It used to be up until very recently, if you were an

00:15:40.160 international student, you could work for up to 20 hours a week, I think it was. And then the government

00:15:45.180 looking at the labor shortage said, okay, let's just get rid of that cap and you can work more than 20

00:15:49.240 hours. And it was funny, right after that happened, I was at a Tim Hortons and there was a foreign 1.00

00:15:55.000 student that walked in and was applying for a job to a coffee shop that hasn't been at full staffing in

00:15:59.940 like four years. So the manager interviewed him on the spot. And as I was waiting for my bagel, I could hear

00:16:04.820 this conversation. And she had said, well, I need someone to work overnights. And he was saying, yeah, I'm happy

00:16:10.800 to do that. I'll work that. But you're not an effective student if you're working

00:16:14.620 overnight, 40 hours a week at the local Tim Hortons. So something in this was not computing

00:16:20.980 and certainly was not keeping with the spirit of what international student programs are supposed

00:16:25.840 to be. So great points all around. You can read her in the national post. And I would encourage

00:16:30.920 you to do that. Sabrina Maddow. Great to have you on the show at long last. Thanks, Sabrina.

00:16:35.420 Thanks for having me.

00:16:36.340 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North

00:16:40.800 at www.tnc.news.

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Juno News - September 03, 2023

Justin Trudeau is losing young voters (ft. Sabrina Maddeaux)

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