The latest Canadian public opinion poll suggests there has been no impact from the seismic events taking place in U.S. politics and that the excitement generated by Kamala Harris has not rubbed off on voters north of the border.
Rather than any ripple effects reinvigorating Liberal support, the latest Abacus Data poll indicates the Conservatives are consolidating their 20-point lead, with the size of the party’s accessible voter pool increasing and leader Pierre Poilievre’s approval rating hitting new highs. As Abacus’ David Coletto and I discussed in June, 20-point comeback election wins are as rare as world-class Australian break-dancers.
In a Substack post, Coletto pointed to one potentially fascinating plot development that might make life even harder for Justin Trudeau — the rise of Conservative popularity in Quebec over concerns about immigration. The new poll has Poilievre’s party tied statistically with the Bloc Québécois (I say “potentially” because the correlation needs more data before it is established).
What can be said is that the Conservatives have gained support in Quebec, as the Liberal vote share has slid. It is also true that a larger proportion of Quebecers list immigration as a top priority than elsewhere in the country. The polling suggests that those who care about the issue think the Conservatives would handle the file better than the Liberals or the Bloc.
While Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he will employ mass deportations and detention camps for immigrants, if elected, Poilievre has not demonized newcomers.
At the same time, he has said that immigration levels will be “much lower” under a government he leads, particularly in the temporary immigrant categories. “It’s impossible to invite 1.2 million new people to Canada every year when you’re only building 200,000 housing units… Quebec is at breaking point,” he said in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.
Three in four Canadians believe that high immigration levels are fuelling the housing crisis, making it hard for the Liberals to mount a comeback when their chief opponent owns the issues that most concern voters.
That is particularly the case on immigration, where the Liberals have no credible response to Poilievre’s charge that the problem has been exacerbated by “total incompetence.”
As economist Mike Moffatt noted on X last week, the Liberals relaxed restrictions on low-wage temporary workers in April 2022, just 13 days after signing a supply and confidence deal with the NDP, and saw the number of newcomers in that category nearly triple.
It’s a long shot. The history of Canadian elections suggests that the outcome of next year’s election is already settled
At a parliamentary committee in February, the former immigration minister Sean Fraser said that the economy was in danger of seizing up at the time because of lack of workers.
Moffatt’s contention is that the government was more concerned about inflation and saw the influx of cheap labour as a way of suppressing wages.
Whatever the explanation, Canada now has 2.7 million non-permanent residents, split between those on work permits, study visas and asylum claimants. Meanwhile, youth unemployment is running at 13.5 per cent and the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation predicts a 3.5 million housing supply gap by 2030, at current immigration levels.
Even the Bank of Canada has expressed its skepticism about the government’s ability to control net non-permanent resident flows, suggesting that a reduction in the number of temporary immigrants to five per cent of population from the current 6.8 per cent over the next three years would require cuts of 70 to 80 per cent in all categories of non-permanent newcomers.
It all makes for grim reading for Liberals, except… there was similar despondency in Democratic circles after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
Even when he announced he was not going to run in November, the clouds did not lift. His vice-president was seen as the only realistic alternative option but a majority of Americans disapproved of her performance.
Yet, since July 20, the Democrats have been born again. Harris’s approval levels have risen and she now leads Trump by 2.8 points in fivethirtyeight.com’s national polling average.
There’s a long way to go until Nov. 5, but Democrats have rediscovered the waking dream of hope.
Veteran U.S. political journalist Jeff Greenfield suggested in Politico this week that Harris is now the “change” candidate, despite being vice-president for the past four years, while Trump, as a former president, represents a restoration of the past. The Harris campaign has embraced this sense by employing the mantra: “We’re not going back,” which is designed to work on multiple levels from abortion to concerns about the previous Trump era.
Aided by a media that doesn’t like Trump and wants a race, Harris has been able to create a buzz that has unleashed a flood of money, crowds and volunteers.
Greenfield suggested this was caused by a pent-up demand for an alternative to another Biden versus Trump run-off.
“Within two weeks, voters now face a reality that had previously seemed impossible. ‘You don’t want to vote for Biden or Trump. Now you don’t have to! You want change? Here she is!’”
Far from being a coup, he explained Biden’s exit from the ticket as a political party exercising its essential task: “the use of formal and informal power to protect itself from disaster.”
Could the Liberal party still snatch victory from the jaws of a potential gong-show?
The polling suggests a couple of faint hope prospects. According to Abacus, four in 10 NDP voters are open to voting Liberal, at the same time as leader Jagmeet Singh has seen his negative impressions rise to their highest level.
The poll also indicates that while there is an overwhelming desire for change — 84 per cent of voters — only 54 per cent believe there is a good alternative to the Liberals.
A repeat of the Kamala effect would require the Liberal party to exercise its use of formal and informal power to ward off disaster, ease aside its leader and replace him with a candidate who runs on a platform of real change.
From this perspective, it is easy to see why some Liberals see Mark Carney as their Messiah. In a Nanos poll this week, he was considered the most politically appealing alternative to Trudeau.
He has all but disowned the consumer carbon tax that Poilievre is so keen to axe and has presented an alternative response to what he called this “hinge moment in history” — a rejection of current Liberal “spend, support and subsidize” in favour of a “time to build” agenda that uses public money to “catalyze” private investment in a lower emission economy.
It’s a long shot. The Conservative lead in the polls has been so commanding since Poilievre was elected leader nearly two years ago that most Canadians have become habituated to it. The history of Canadian elections suggests that the outcome of next year’s election is already settled.
Yet, as Kamala Harris has just shown in a matter of weeks, past performance is not necessarily a guarantee of future results.
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