A provincial disappointment

While Canadians seem to love Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with his approval rating as high as 67 per cent, our provincial premiers seem to be getting blamed for all the country’s problems.

According to the Angus Reid Institute, Saskatchewan’s “common man” Brad Wall’s 57 per cent approval and Manitoba’s Brian Pallister’s 53 per cent are the only premiers with positive approval ratings — and they’re both members of provincial conservative parties. Alberta’s own NDP Rachel Notley has an unsurprisingly low rating of 31 per cent. Finally, rounding out the bottom is Ontario’s immensely unpopular Liberal Premier, Kathleen Wynne with a 20 per cent, as her struggle with the hydropower remains unresolved.

The remainder of the premiers have equally low approval ratings. With a struggling economy, the voter base is looking for someone to blame. While currently it is being focused on most of the unpopular premiers, the popular premiers and prime minister are soon to join their peers in the bottom end of the approval ratings.

While some premiers have enjoyed a quick bump in the polls, such as Brad Wall’s continual approval of the Saskatchewan public, Dion Blythe, a professor in the U of A’s political science department, asserts that despite personal popularity, no one is “immune to a bad economy.” He suggests that with a period of poor economy comes a change in government. Blythe infers that provinces such as Ontario and Alberta will likely change from their Liberal and NDP governments into a Conservative provincial government by the next provincial elections as the economy fails to regain momentum. On a federal level, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is just popular at the moment and Blythe furthers that the struggling economy is “the bigger story.”

Saskatchewan seems to be the outlier. Brad Wall may be hitting some issues such as the sale of provincial crown corporations, but he still remains the people’s candidate. Blythe compared him to Alberta’s Ralph Klein for his ability to relate to the “common person” and be “very articulate” in his positions. He also mentioned a “weak opposition” within Saskatchewan parliament. Again, Blythe stressed that no politician is unaffected by a bad economy; while Wall’s approval ratings are impressive for the premier of nine years, if the economy doesn’t change, he will continue to drop in the polls. An anecdotal example of his popularity despite a struggling economy, in my hometown of Preeceville, Saskatchewan, emergency hospital services were shut down but general disdain went towards the regional health authority and the federal government before they considered damning Brad Wall and his government’s budget cuts.

Contrast this to Alberta’s Rachel Notley, who was voted in on a protest vote against the previous Progressive Conservative government, suffering in the polls as she is blamed for something beyond her control. As oil continues to stagnate under $50 a barrel, she still fails to relate to the common voter as much as Brad Wall or even Justin Trudeau does. Blythe suggests that Notley needs to “change the narrative” of the failing economy being their fault in order to regain public favour and have better chance of connecting to public on a personal level. If she is unable to do this, by the next provincial election, the NDP will lose the election and give the Conservatives back their dominance over Alberta’s legislature. 

While most premiers are being harshly affected by a bad economy, Brad Wall and Justin Trudeau are currently unscathed. Despite this, Blythe affirms that their “sheen will wear off.” He continues that this time next year, assuming the economy has not changed, their approval ratings will drop to just as low as the other premiers.

Another distinct possibility is that premiers might need to adopt the Trudeau approach, and simply take more shirtless selfies for social media.