Justin Trudeau's sinking popularity puts him on shaky ground

In late August, a tense exchange was caught on camera between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a local steel worker in northern Ontario.

As Trudeau reached out for a handshake, the worker refused it, confronting the prime minister instead about his struggle to make ends meet despite having a steady job.

Trudeau responded by listing things his Liberal government has done to help working families, including a national dental care programme and a tariff on Chinese steel that is designed to protect Canadian workers.

“I don’t believe you for a second,” the steel worker replied, after telling the prime minister: “I think you are only here for another year.”

The clip, viewed millions of times on the internet, and has been described by the Toronto Globe and Mail as “a perfect miniature of the moment” in Canadian politics, encapsulating the fatigue and frustration that Trudeau is facing from the public.

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau’s approval rate has plummeted from 63% when he was first elected to 28% in June of this year, according to one poll tracker.

This sinking popularity has already brought consequences to Trudeau’s governing Liberal Party. In a recent by-election, the party lost a Toronto federal seat that it had held for 30 years to the opposition Conservative Party - a major sign of trouble.

On Monday, Trudeau and the Liberals face another set of tests - a crucial by-election in a Liberal stronghold in Montreal, Quebec, and the resumption of parliament, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has vowed to table a motion of no-confidence as early as possible in an attempt to bring down the minority government.

If Poilievre is successful, Canadians could head to the ballot box.

And if current polls are any indication on how they might vote, the next federal election may mark the end of the Trudeau era.

Darrell Bricker, a political scientist and pollster with Ipsos, compared the current moment in Canadian politics to this summer’s historic defeat of the UK Tories, who lost 251 seats in British parliament.

“It’s basically over,” said Mr Bricker of Trudeau’s government in an interview with the BBC.

“All that is happening is sands sliding out of the sand dial, and we’re working our way towards an inevitable conclusion.”

It is a dramatic reversal of fortune for Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was enthusiastically elected in 2015 by Canadians on a message of positivity, change and strengthening the middle class.

In his first years as prime minister, Trudeau became a global progressive icon. He appeared in Vogue and on the cover of Rolling Stone, which carried the headline “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”

But in recent years, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Canadians say they have noticed a downward shift in their country. Homes are becoming unaffordable, grocery prices have skyrocketed, crime has become more visible, and Canada’s public healthcare system is struggling.

While many of these issues do not fall squarely on the shoulders of the federal government - healthcare, for example, is largely overseen by the provinces - Canadians seem to have mostly directed their frustration at Trudeau.

In an August opinion piece published in Canada’s national newspaper the Globe and Mail, author and lawyer Omer Aziz wrote that the country is “witnessing a systemic political failure” and, more broadly, the decline of the “Canadian dream”.

Mr Aziz, who previously worked as a policy advisor under Trudeau’s government, told the BBC that Canadians feel the prime minister has failed to deliver on his promises.

He recalled the jubilation of Liberal supporters when Trudeau was first elected. “People were cheering on the streets, and I saw a new era,” he said.

But after three terms under Trudeau, that progress “hasn’t come to pass," Mr Aziz said.

“There is a sense that political leaders, the prime minister and the government, have been unwilling or unable to respond to these concerns that have been building for a number of years,” he said.

“People now are looking anywhere else for an alternative.”

Following June’s by-election defeat in Toronto, Trudeau has faced pressure to quit from members of his own party.

The Liberals’ campaign manager, Jeremy Broadhurst, later resigned in September, after reportedly telling Trudeau that he did not believe he could win the next election.

The prime minister has held on, making various stops at events across the country this summer.

At those appearances, Trudeau has presented his government’s solutions to Canada’s problems, like a plan to build nearly four million new homes by 2031 to increase the housing supply, or a cap on immigration to ease the stress on public resources.

He has also sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and his Conservative opponent, saying that his party believes in "investing in Canadians" while Poilievre wants to "cut programmes Canadians are relying on".

"That's the choice that people are going to make next year," Trudeau told reporters last week.

None of this seems to have bought the Liberal Party and Trudeau any goodwill.

The gap between the Liberals and the leading Conservatives among decided voters has grown wider since the beginning of this year, according to a number of opinion surveys.

“I think people have made up their minds now, and anything that they're doing now is too little, too late,” Mr Aziz said. “It should have been done years ago.”

Canada’s progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) also recently withdrew from a supply-and-confidence agreement that kept Trudeau in power in exchange for assurances on key progressive policy pieces.

Announcing the end of the agreement, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said "the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people".

That deal was supposed to be in place until next June, with an election scheduled for October 2025.

With that support gone, “every day in parliament is going to be consequential”, Mr Bricker noted.

“It’s going to be a very difficult autumn for the Liberals,” he added.