In this episode, I discuss the dramatic decline in support for the Liberal Party since the election, and why it's a big deal. I also discuss a new data set from Abacus that shows how the Liberals are doing relative to the priorities they had run on.
00:00:00.160Ahoy, everyone. I am back on the whiteboard again for a video because we are seeing a very big polling shift occurring in Canada right now,
00:00:10.760with Canadians finally realizing, at least in part, that Mark Carney and the Liberals have no real way of actually achieving many of the policy goals that they had set during the election.
00:00:22.420This is a big deal because while, yes, we are not going to have an election tomorrow in order to capitalize on the Liberals' popularity going down substantially,
00:00:33.300it demonstrates that Canadians are paying attention and they are not going to be dazzled simply by elbows-up rhetoric forever.
00:00:41.500Eventually, you actually need to get stuff done.
00:00:43.940I remember when I had first said with that Abacus data poll that came out that showed that the Liberals went from leading by three to the Conservatives leading by two,
00:00:53.340that we were going to see other pollsters start to follow suit.
00:00:57.500People said that that was highly naive of me on social media.
00:09:27.380Reduce government spending, despite the fact that Carney keeps making these declarations about how he wants his ministers to, you know, find savings over the next couple of years.
00:09:37.240Make, you know, make your departments more efficient.
00:09:40.840Get rid of the redundancies and whatnot.
00:09:43.220And by doing that, and this is what we're going to talk about in the Angus Reid poll probably tomorrow.
00:09:48.540Not only has he kicked off a lot of the public sector unions and a lot of people are going back to voting for the NDP.
00:09:54.400But those who are more fiscally hawkish, who want to see the government reduce spending, and there are actually liberals who care about that sort of thing, finance guys in downtown Toronto, who despite voting liberal, maybe for more social issues, wanted to see a carny government that acted kind of more conservative, that wanted to reduce just the waste in government.
00:10:17.160And that is not rated very highly now.
00:10:21.440It's already gone down 3%, despite all the prognostications of Mark Carney saying that, oh, yeah, no, don't worry, we're going to find an extra $20 billion in the budget through efficiencies.
00:10:32.600And I think they've already had, like, reports come out saying that even if Mark Carney was able to find all the efficiencies he says he is, he's only going to be saving, like, you know, a dozen, you know, $20 billion over, like, 10 years or something like that.
00:10:47.740Or you'd only find it in that amount of time, the amount of time it would take more like attritional, like attritional firings or attritional layoffs or retirements to actually have the impact that Carney thinks they are, it's going to be years and it's not really going to be that substantial.
00:11:03.440But now I want to move on to another poll that Abacus Data put out, specifically on the issue of basically how important the issue of Donald Trump is, if they are tired of this being, like, the main bugaboo right now of Canadian politics.
00:11:20.800So I'm just going to pause, erase the board, and then come back to you with that to talk about.
00:11:27.800Okay, we are back, and I'll admit that this polling result actually took me by surprise.
00:11:34.480I thought there was going to be more staying power to talking about Donald Trump in Canada, and it turns out a lot of people just want to stop hearing about it.
00:11:43.920So this poll result was, or this poll question was asking, are you tired of hearing about Trump when Canada's own challenges need fixing?
00:11:56.380And they basically provide examples of housing and healthcare and the economy.
00:12:00.880So when the economy, housing, and healthcare are right now in a crisis in Canada, do you want to stop hearing about Donald Trump's name all the time?
00:12:09.700Now, this one is not bearing good results for the liberals at all.
00:12:15.480Hey, look, I have more colors than I usually do for markers, so I'll do everything very, very nicely color-coded.
00:12:22.380We're going to start off with those who actually still do think that we actually do need to be talking about Donald Trump.
00:12:30.460So this is the Laura Babcock crowd, those who think that, no, Trump is a very relevant issue and we should be talking about him.
00:12:39.700So, and this is in severity in terms of, I'm not tired of it at all, no, not really, and then yes, somewhat tired, and then yes, very tired.
00:12:48.180So let's start off with not at all tired about hearing about Donald Trump.
00:12:52.560And remember, this is something that the liberal government is still talking about all the time.
00:12:56.500Whether it's overtly talking about it, like bringing up his name, or kind of scapegoating the idea that the Americans did say to us, and this is Trump, this is Trump's trade fight he's having against us, even though our own economy sucked before all this.
00:13:10.180But only, only 4% of people say that they are not tired of hearing about Donald Trump.
00:13:20.1804% of people still think that he is relevant to be talking about in the context of how bad our current problems are.
00:13:28.080And then, once we jump down to people who are, you know, not, like, not really tired of hearing about Donald Trump, not, not at all, not at all would be like, no, I think we should be talking about him all the time.
00:13:41.380But those who are not really tired of it yet, it is 12%.