Why Trudeau is Going to Lose the Next Election

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has avoided a snap election so far but sooner or later his time is going to run out and when it does, polls suggest he and his party are going to face a big loss to the conservatives. Today the Free Press published a story helping to explain why so many young voters have turned on Trudeau. As the saying goes, it’s the economy, stupid.

At University Hospital in London, Ontario, Amanda Vanderley, 25, works grueling 12-hour shifts as an emergency room nurse. Each day includes not just providing critical care and assisting doctors with emergency procedures but also managing patients’ anxieties…

Amanda’s $38 an hour, together with Mattias’s income, brings them around $135,000 annually before taxes. But after Canada’s high taxes, they are left with $85,000 to $90,000 in Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $60,000 in U.S. dollars. The financial strain is palpable—they’re barely managing day to day, let alone contemplating buying a home…

“I’ll be supporting the Conservative Party in the next election because I’ve seen the damage that big government and reckless spending has done,” Vanderley told me.

A 20-year-old management consultant in Toronto, who had previously volunteered to support the Liberals told the Free Press he’ll be voting Conservative in the next election.

“Trudeau has lost the plot. He and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland have been gaslighting people about the state of Canada’s economy since the pandemic.

“For most people in the real economy, we’ve been in a recession.”

The economic numbers show that these aren’t just anecdotes. Canada has a housing affordability crisis, a stagnant GDP and high youth unemployment.

economic growth has stagnated with GDP per capita (how economists measure the financial well-being of the average person) contracting for eight out of the last nine quarters. Unemployment in October was at 6.5 percent and youth (15 to 24) unemployment at 12.8 percent, after peaking at 14.5 percent in August.

The youth unemployment numbers are connected to the high immigration rates Trudeau has encouraged. It’s to the point that even he has recently started talking tougher on immigration, just like Kamala Harris did before the US election.

Trudeau has also started trying to buy back some voters. Last month he suspended the federal sales tax and sent Canadians a check.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘s government announced plans Thursday to temporarily lift the federal sales tax off a number of items and send checks to millions of Canadians who are dealing with rising costs and as a federal election looms.

The measures come as a cost of living crisis has left voters unhappy with Trudeau and ahead of an election that could come anytime between this fall and next October.

“Our government can’t set prices at the checkout, but we can put more money in people’s pockets,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Toronto.

As a result of all of this, support for the Liberal Party among those 18 to 29 is down to about 20% while support for the Conservatives is up to 43%. People are desperate for a change but so far neither the NDP led by Jagmeet Singh nor the Bloc Quebecois have been willing to pull their support to let a snap election take place.

The worst case scenario here is that the smaller parties continue to back Trudeau until the next scheduled election in October of next year. That’s a long time to wait for some relief but there doesn’t seem to be any real way for Trudeau to talk his way out his problems this time around.