Canadians like Liberal budget but prefer Conservatives to govern, polls say

Thestar.com
March 26, 2019
Ben Rayner

Two polls conducted after last week’s federal budget show Canadians generally approve of the Liberals’ new spending plans, but not enough to shake the prospect of a Conservative government if an election were to be called now.

The latest data compiled by Toronto’s Forum Research firm on the ongoing “federal horse race” between the governing Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP shows voter intentions remain tilted in favour of the Tories.

Of the 1,490 random Canadians asked over March 19 and 20 who they would mostly likely vote for -- or would “lean toward” voting for -- “if a federal election were held today,” 41 per cent said they would vote Conservative versus 35 per cent for the Liberals, with the NDP coming in third place with 14 per cent.

Given the polling methodology’s projected margin of error of “plus or minus three per cent, 19 times out of 20,” those rankings have essentially been locked in the same positions since a Forum Research survey in January 2018 that placed the Conservatives at 43 per cent, the Liberals at 38 per cent and the NDP at 12 per cent.

A second Forum poll conducted during the same period found favourable sentiments across the country toward most of the big proposals in the budget.

More than half of its respondents support the planned introduction of a national pharmacare program (55 per cent), while a solid majority was behind offering financial aid to upgrade worker skills and training (57 per cent) and a plan that would allow senior citizens to work part-time while still collecting the guaranteed income supplement (57 per cent).

About half of those polled also support financial incentives for first-time home buyers (47 per cent) and people looking to purchase zero-emission vehicles (47 per cent). Less popular is a proposal to allocate more federal money to speed up asylum claims, with 38 per cent opposed and 32 per cent in favour. The introduction of a federal carbon tax, meanwhile, was rejected by 46 per cent of respondents, with 39 per cent saying they oppose it “strongly.”

“A lot of the individual measures in the budget are actually fairly popular,” said Forum’s Gary Milakovic. “That’s the thing that’s most interesting: on the individual planks, people are saying ‘Yes, these things are good. We like the idea of national pharmacare, the homebuyers’ incentive is a great idea.’ But when you actually look at the ‘political horse race,’ as we’ve been seeing it for some time now, it’s not shifting the needle in favour of the Liberals.

“The one thing that I will say is that there’s been a lot of negative press related to SNC-Lavalin and the government right now, but we haven’t seen that significantly affect our results. They’ve more or less been stable for the last little while … We did a poll slightly after Jody Wilson-Raybould testified and we saw similar numbers from what we’ve seen in the past.”

But despite support for most of the proposals put forth by Finance Minister Bill Morneau in Ottawa last Tuesday, the overwhelming opinion among those polled by Forum was that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are “bad economic managers.” An even 50 per cent of respondents replied “bad” when asked “In general, are the Liberals good economic managers, bad economic managers or neither?” -- with 32 per cent saying they were “very bad” -- while 30 per cent said “neither.” Just 20 per cent felt the Liberals fell in the “good” category, and only one in 20 respondents felt the job they’re doing qualifies as “very good.”

The current data projects 173 seats for the Tories in the House of Commons if an election were held immediately, with the Liberals nipping at their heels with 143 and the NDP and the Green Party far behind with 21 and one seats, respectively.

The new polls show the Conservatives most popular in Alberta, where 70 per cent of respondents would vote for them, and least popular in Quebec, where only 22 per cent would do the same. The Liberals were most popular in Quebec, with 54 per cent support, and least popular in Alberta, at 17 per cent. Ontario, for its part, mirrored the national averages, with 41 per cent of respondents opting for the Conservatives, 37 per cent for the Liberals and 15 per cent for the NDP.