Indefinitely … unless the Opposition gets its act together
If you’re a federal Liberal, these are the best of times. Continuing what appears to be this country’s longest political honeymoon ever, the Trudeau government just scored a 56 per cent approval rating in the latest Abacus Data poll, a full eight months after its election. An Angus Reid survey recently delivered a 63 per cent approval rating for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
And if an election were held today, Abacus found that 44 per cent of Canadians would vote for the Liberals, 28 per cent would cast their ballots for the Tories and a scant 16 per cent would back the NDP. Forget sunny ways: The Liberals are blinding their opponents with a laser beam.
To be fair, both the Conservatives and NDP are labouring under one major disadvantage — neither party has a permanent leader. Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose is acquitting herself admirably, but will not be sticking around past May 2017. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair was turfed by his party at their convention this spring, after winning an anemic 48 per cent support in his leadership review; he’ll be officially out by October 2017.
Trudeau, meanwhile, strides across the world stage from Paris to Washington to Tokyo, winning accolades from the international community. Back home, he can take credit not only for his party’s election, but for its resurrection. Vaulting from third place to majority government is no small feat, especially considering he entered the election campaign as the underdog.
In light of this fact, should the opposition parties be resigned to a waiting game, pinning their hopes on their respective leadership contests? Not completely. But they need to “pace themselves”, as my dear late father always advised me — to take the long view and change the nature and focus of their attacks, which have been largely ineffective so far.
Read the full article on iPolitics.