Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will face the House of Commons next week for the first time since June. It begins the fall sitting of Parliament with an approval rating among Canadians that no government has seen in nearly a decade, according to new polling done exclusively for Global News by Ipsos.
While Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre has derided the Carney government’s activities since June as a “Seinfeld summer,” a summer in which Conservatives argue the government did “nothing,” Ipsos found that, over the summer, the Carney government’s approval rating has climbed by 10 points and now sits at 58 per cent.
Ipsos has not measured such a high approval rating for a government since Justin Trudeau’s government notched 61 per cent approval after its first year in office.
“So ‘Seinfeld’ was a show about nothing but it was also very popular,” said Ipsos’ Toronto-based Global CEO of Public Affairs, Darrell Bricker.
“[Canadians] certainly hope that [Carney’s] going to have success and they’re giving him the benefit of the doubt and that’s the way it works in politics. The question is: how long of a runway does he have in which people are going to remain polite?”
In its poll, conducted Sept. 5-8, Ipsos found highest levels of approval for the Carney government among those aged 18-34 (63 per cent approve) and 55 and older. (59 per cent approve)
And yet, Ipsos finds that the Carney government has some potential vulnerabilities that the Conservatives, Bloc Québecois and NDP opposition will be keen to exploit. Those vulnerabilities are on the issues of affordability, the cost of living and the economy.
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“You can’t communicate your way out of this,” Bricker said. “You can’t promise your way of this. You’ve got to find a way to actually have a direct effect.
“The Trudeau government failed at it, and the Carney government, while people are hopeful, have not really reversed the public’s opinions on any of those things.”
Ipsos surveyed 1,001 Canadians via an online questionnaire and asked each respondent to give a grade — A to F — on the “progress the Liberal government under the leadership of Mark Carney has made on the following issues” since the spring election. Better than one in three or 36 per cent surveyed gave the government an “F” when it came to “lowering the cost of living for people like you.” Just under one in three or 31 per cent gave a failing grade on “dealing with Canada’s housing affordability crisis.”
The issue that appeared to power Carney and the Liberals to victory in the spring was the perception Carney was best to handle U.S. President Donald Trump and tariffs. However, as even some of Carney’s ministers conceded when cabinet held two days of meetings in Toronto earlier this month, sorting out the relationship with the White House is no longer the urgent issue it was in the spring. That shifting set of top issues, though, does not yet appear to have hurt Carney with the electorate.
“People don’t have buyer’s regret at the moment about voting for Mark Carney, especially those people who voted for him on trade with the United States,” Bricker said.
But a new set of urgent political issues has emerged — almost all of them focusing around the economy.
“Do people feel that Mark Carney and the Liberals are making any progress on affordability of housing? No. Do they feel that they’re making cost of living any better? No. Do they feel like he’s making them any more secure in their jobs and secure about what their personal circumstances are going to be going forward? The answer to that question so far is no,” said Bricker.
All that said: The one thing that appears to have changed little over the summer is voter preference. Nationally, Ipsos found that 43 per cent of decided voters would choose the Liberals versus 44 per cent in the spring election; 39 per cent would vote Conservative versus 41 per cent in the election; and seven per cent would pick the leaderless NDP versus the 6.3 per cent who cast a ballot for Jagmeet Singh’s NDP in April.
Looking at Quebec only: the Liberals lead at 41 per cent, followed by the BQ at 32 per cent; the Conservatives at 23 per cent and the NDP at just 1 per cent. For this survey, Ipsos polled 184 individuals in Quebec.
David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.
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