Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 19, 2016

Nearly two-thirds of Canadians approve of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government: Ipsos

One year since the Liberals won the federal election, two-thirds of Canadians approve of the job Justin Trudeau’s government has done, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News.

“He’s very popular. If you look at leaders in the rest of the world, he’s got numbers that any of them would envy,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. “We’re finding 64 per cent of Canadians saying that they basically approve of his performance and the government’s performance.”

But although Trudeau is popular, his numbers aren’t that different from the last time Canada elected a new government at the federal level.

“People might say that Justin Trudeau is at an unprecedented level of public support, but we did the same poll with Stephen Harper in 2006 after one year of him being in power and he was at 62, so the difference is only two points, pretty much within the margin of error,” said Bricker.

“So I think when big change happens, after 10 years somebody’s in power, somebody new comes in and they deliver something different, people generally respond well to it. That’s what we saw in the first year of Harper and it’s what we’re seeing in the first year of Justin Trudeau.”

If Trudeau’s government follows the same kind of public opinion trajectory, they’re in for a slow, steady drop: by the 2015 election, the Conservative approval rating had fallen to 41 per cent. (Source: Global News)