The Freedom Convoy Put Justin Trudeau’s Popularity in Permanent Decline

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is clearly not a leader conservative Canadians have many positive things to say about him, but one backhanded compliment any conservative could give Trudeau is that he is great at surviving political scandals.

Staying on Aga Khan’s private island, SNC-Lavalin, blackface, WE Charity, the Tofino trip on the first Truth and Reconciliation holiday, and the several complaints of bullying from female Liberal MPs, are all scandals that have not caused Trudeau and the Liberals to get thrown out of office. 

Trudeau’s approval rating falling in the wake of the Freedom Convoy and Emergencies Act debacle seems to indicated Canadians believe his aggressive rhetoric, use of police resources against the protesters, and freezing of their bank accounts, constitutes a scandal. And this scandal looks like it actually may do permanent damage to Trudeau and the Liberal Party. 

According to a poll from Nanos research (a polling company that tends to oversample liberal Canadians) Justin Trudeau’s handling of the Freedom Convoy only made him more favourable with 20 percent of Canadians, while 47 percent had their view of him worsen and 31 percent didn’t have their views change.

Numbers like these should terrify the Liberals, and they likely are seeing as Trudeau reversed course on the Emergencies Act nine days into invoking it, despite heavily implying he wanted to keep it in place much longer just a day before revoking it.

Often public polling is conducted not to gauge public perception but to mold it, and that very much seemed to be the case with the majority of polling about the Freedom Convoy, but internal polling conducted by the Liberal Party likely reflected that the above Nanos poll was accurate. 

Justin Trudeau after the 2021 election was already not the most popular guy in Canada, and to now have the vast majority of Canadians either having their opinion of him worsen or not change is catastrophic.

The legacy media will no doubt try and save Trudeau from his new image of vindictiveness and intolerance, but they too were damaged interpretable by their own Freedom Convoy coverage, as well as the previous two years of pushing the most blatant forms of government propaganda.

According to a recent poll from Proof Strategies, only 35 percent of Canadians trust the legacy media, which is down from 38 percent last year.

Maybe it is naive to assume Trudeau’s authoritarian handling of the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters will damage him in the long run, but what is different about this scandal compared to his past scandals is that Trudeau made this one personally to a large portion of Canadians. 

Closed-door corruption is one thing, smearing peaceful protesters as racists who are “standing with swastikas” while an elderly woman gets trampled by a police horse is quite another thing.