> Mr Trudeau became a beacon of morality after he swept to power in 2015, welcoming refugees from war-torn Syria that Christmas. He legalised marijuana, rewarding the record number of young people who had voted for him. He faced down a truculent President Donald Trump to salvage the North American trade pact that is foundational to Canadian prosperity. His government’s annual payment to families of up to C$7,787 ($5,660) per child under six is hailed for lifting 435,000 children out of poverty. After promising child-care subsidies to help more women into work, working-class and younger voters gave him renewed minority mandates in 2019 and 2021.
> Three years later those groups have turned on Mr Trudeau. Today both tend to support the opposition, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. What went wrong?
> The high cost of housing is central. The cost of owning a home in Canada has increased by 66% since he took office in 2015, with prices rising faster in this century than in any other sizeable OECD country bar Australia. Lack of supply is a problem in many, but is especially acute in Canada. In 2022 the average OECD country had 468 dwellings per 1,000 inhabitants. Canada had 426, a number that has hardly moved in a decade (see chart 1). Mike Moffatt, a housing economist, says a “wartime effort” is needed to triple the current building rate and throw up 5.8m houses in the next ten years. No such luck. In August, Canadian housing starts dropped to an annualised rate of 217,000.
> Demand for housing from the large number of immigrants during Mr Trudeau’s decade in power has worsened the crunch. The number of temporary foreign workers jumped from 109,000 in 2018 to just under 240,000 in 2023. The number of non-permanent residents—including temporary foreign workers, students and asylum-seekers—has more than doubled from 1.3m in 2021 to over 3m on July 1st, according to Statistics Canada, representing 7.3% of Canada’s total population of 41m.
> […]
> Climate change offered Mr Trudeau perhaps his clearest opportunity to blend moral leadership with pragmatism. But he ignored polling showing that while Canadians were concerned about the climate crisis, they were also loth to pay taxes equivalent to a Netflix subscription to fight it. His carbon tax, introduced in 2019, imposed a levy on greenhouse-gas emissions, currently running at C$50 per tonne, scheduled to rise by C$15 annually to reach C$170 per tonne in 2030. Canada’s parliamentary budget watchdog said last week that most households were worse off when indirect costs of the tax were factored in [after 2030]. Mr Trudeau’s failure to find a way to compensate groups who lost out as a result of the tax left it and him vulnerable to attacks from Mr Poilievre; he says the tax will lead to “nuclear winter”, trigger “mass hunger and malnutrition” and compel poor, older people to freeze. Support for the carbon levy has crumbled.
> […]
> Instead of adapting to or confronting challenges thrown up by his policies, Mr Trudeau has preferred to attack his critics. He seemed inert as the erosion of his party’s support has accelerated. Some Liberals privately suggest the breakdown of his marriage last year distracted him. In a shuffle aimed at energising his front bench last year more than half his cabinet changed portfolios, but the economic message remained the same: we will continue to deliver “good things” to Canadians. Only recently has Mr Trudeau begun to acknowledge that this fell short. “Doing good things isn’t enough to deal with the kind of anxiety that is out there,” he told the Montreal conference. He still describes his voters’ problems in psychological rather than practical terms.
**Boxed out**
> Mr Poilievre identified that economic anxiety early. This lent him credibility with the sectors of the Canadian electorate who felt abandoned. He has boiled his platform down to a series of simple three-word slogans. He says his first piece of legislation will be to “axe the tax”, ditching the carbon levy. He has yet to outline what his government would do to fight climate change, but polls make it clear that Canadians care far less than they used to. All too many have forsaken Mr Trudeau, and the causes he stood for.
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Archived version: [https://archive.fo/zo3IP](https://archive.fo/zo3IP).
Summary:
> Mr Trudeau became a beacon of morality after he swept to power in 2015, welcoming refugees from war-torn Syria that Christmas. He legalised marijuana, rewarding the record number of young people who had voted for him. He faced down a truculent President Donald Trump to salvage the North American trade pact that is foundational to Canadian prosperity. His government’s annual payment to families of up to C$7,787 ($5,660) per child under six is hailed for lifting 435,000 children out of poverty. After promising child-care subsidies to help more women into work, working-class and younger voters gave him renewed minority mandates in 2019 and 2021.
> Three years later those groups have turned on Mr Trudeau. Today both tend to support the opposition, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. What went wrong?
> The high cost of housing is central. The cost of owning a home in Canada has increased by 66% since he took office in 2015, with prices rising faster in this century than in any other sizeable OECD country bar Australia. Lack of supply is a problem in many, but is especially acute in Canada. In 2022 the average OECD country had 468 dwellings per 1,000 inhabitants. Canada had 426, a number that has hardly moved in a decade (see chart 1). Mike Moffatt, a housing economist, says a “wartime effort” is needed to triple the current building rate and throw up 5.8m houses in the next ten years. No such luck. In August, Canadian housing starts dropped to an annualised rate of 217,000.
> Demand for housing from the large number of immigrants during Mr Trudeau’s decade in power has worsened the crunch. The number of temporary foreign workers jumped from 109,000 in 2018 to just under 240,000 in 2023. The number of non-permanent residents—including temporary foreign workers, students and asylum-seekers—has more than doubled from 1.3m in 2021 to over 3m on July 1st, according to Statistics Canada, representing 7.3% of Canada’s total population of 41m.
> […]
> Climate change offered Mr Trudeau perhaps his clearest opportunity to blend moral leadership with pragmatism. But he ignored polling showing that while Canadians were concerned about the climate crisis, they were also loth to pay taxes equivalent to a Netflix subscription to fight it. His carbon tax, introduced in 2019, imposed a levy on greenhouse-gas emissions, currently running at C$50 per tonne, scheduled to rise by C$15 annually to reach C$170 per tonne in 2030. Canada’s parliamentary budget watchdog said last week that most households were worse off when indirect costs of the tax were factored in [after 2030]. Mr Trudeau’s failure to find a way to compensate groups who lost out as a result of the tax left it and him vulnerable to attacks from Mr Poilievre; he says the tax will lead to “nuclear winter”, trigger “mass hunger and malnutrition” and compel poor, older people to freeze. Support for the carbon levy has crumbled.
> […]
> Instead of adapting to or confronting challenges thrown up by his policies, Mr Trudeau has preferred to attack his critics. He seemed inert as the erosion of his party’s support has accelerated. Some Liberals privately suggest the breakdown of his marriage last year distracted him. In a shuffle aimed at energising his front bench last year more than half his cabinet changed portfolios, but the economic message remained the same: we will continue to deliver “good things” to Canadians. Only recently has Mr Trudeau begun to acknowledge that this fell short. “Doing good things isn’t enough to deal with the kind of anxiety that is out there,” he told the Montreal conference. He still describes his voters’ problems in psychological rather than practical terms.
**Boxed out**
> Mr Poilievre identified that economic anxiety early. This lent him credibility with the sectors of the Canadian electorate who felt abandoned. He has boiled his platform down to a series of simple three-word slogans. He says his first piece of legislation will be to “axe the tax”, ditching the carbon levy. He has yet to outline what his government would do to fight climate change, but polls make it clear that Canadians care far less than they used to. All too many have forsaken Mr Trudeau, and the causes he stood for.
!ping Can&Democracy