In a time of widespread disagreement and ever-increasing polarization, there remains a bitter solidarity among Canadians in the belief that the government doesn’t know what it’s doing.
In the wake of regional discontent from the western provinces and blockades jamming up the country’s rail network, a towering majority of Canadians agree with the statement, “Right now, Canada is broken.”
Sixty-nine per cent of Canadians agree with the statement, rising to 83% in Alberta, found a DART & Maru/Blue poll conducted for the National Post.
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“This is one of the few polls that I just looked at — and I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so I did polling around the Oka Crisis — I was astonished when I saw some of these numbers, but I’m not surprised,” said long-time pollster John Wright, a partner with DART.
The poll spells bad news for Justin Trudeau with a majority of people believing that the country is not headed in the right direction and that the prime minister is not governing well. The Liberals also get most of the blame for the rail blockades.
And on Trudeau’s signature promise to help Indigenous people, two-thirds of Canadians don’t believe he has delivered on that pledge.
“A lot of the blame has been centred on the prime minister and the Liberal government,” said Daniel Béland, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
Béland said the trouble started for Trudeau early on, because the blockades began while he was out of the country, campaigning for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
“There was some form of void. The government left the impression — at least many people came to the conclusion — that there was no one really in charge of the situation,” said Béland.
On the topic of the rail blockades, only 27 per cent of Canadians think Trudeau has handled the situation well, while the premiers get a 45 per cent approval rating on the issue.
And while Canadians are comprehensively scathing about Trudeau’s government they are conflicted about the demonstrators and the concerns of Indigenous people in Canada.
The poll suggests this may be partly because Canadians think governments constantly lie to Indigenous people. Fifty-seven per cent of Canadians agree that “governments lie to Indigenous people about making things better for them.”
A majority of Canadians, 62%, also believe Trudeau has not delivered on his promises to Indigenous people.
Roughly half the country disagree with the methods used to protest, but they would “stand with Indigenous people in solidarity” to help solve these issues. Half of Canadians also think “we’ve done enough for Indigenous people in Canada.”
Still, two-thirds of Canadians say they would support a one-time payment issued immediately to Indigenous people for things like “food, clean water and housing,” to cover the “necessities of life,” even if it cost $1 billion.
With the blockades coinciding with economic unrest and alienation in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the poll respondents and people interviewed by the Post worry that the bleak mood in the country isn’t just a temporary problem.
“Canada is not broken. Canada’s institutions are broken,” said Donald Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the University of Moncton, who has written extensively about democracy in Canada.
Savoie said from the beginning of confederation, the governance structures were designed to balance Quebec and Ontario, without much regard for western Canada.
“In 1867, the concern was to protect Canada against democracy, not to protect regional interests,” said Savoie. “Until we have an institution that can speak on behalf of the regions, we are going to have a problem.”
That worry was recently echoed in a manifesto released by a handful of Alberta MPs last week. Among other concerns, the “Buffalo Declaration” noted that Alberta has a little more than half the senators of either New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, despite a much larger population.
Savoie said that most countries have some kind of regional counterweight, like the United States Senate which allocates two Senators for every state, but Canada has never had any institution that effectively performs that role.
Asked to rank how various people have handled the Wet’suwet’en protests, 67 per cent of people think the rail companies have handled it well. The provincial police get a 57 per cent approval rating and the RCMP get 55 per cent approval.
Politicians, though, get much worse reviews. Provincial premiers get a 45 per cent approval rating, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer gets 36 per cent approval, and only 27 per cent of Canadians think Trudeau has handled the situation well.
More than 80 per cent of Canadians believe their politicians care more about their own partisan interests than working on behalf of all Canadians. The highest level of agreement on this came from Alberta, at 90 per cent, and Atlantic Canada, at 86 per cent.
Wright said the issue of increasing partisanship and polarization is one that worries him.
“People are truly frustrated with the inability of their leadership to come together and recognize that human beings are being affected by their decisions and that they’re not simply voters,” said Wright.
The DART & Maru/Blue poll was conducted among 1,511 randomly selected Canadian adult members of Maru/Blue’s online panel on Feb. 24 and is considered accurate within plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
