the opposition is focusing on the carbon tax, but this is red meat for it's base and not what is driving poll numbers. canada is dealing with an overpopulation problem, but it was the harper government that increased immigration to unsustainable levels in order to try to change the population dynamics in the country (in canada, brown people tend to be religious conservatives and vote for the tories, something that is also true in britain, which is a better way to understand canadian politics, and something the pmo refuses to understand, because it's mostly composed of people that went to school in the united states and get their politics from cenk uygur), and all that trudeau has done is hold to the policy set by harper. i've been pointing out for years that trudeau is just harper lite and historians will look back at the harper-trudeau years. trudeau is to harper as clinton was to reagan; trudeau was elected to overturn much of what harper did, but has instead been a caretaker government that has simply enforced the reforms made by harper, without adding much of anything at all of it's own (save a few poorly thought out ideas enforced on them by their coalition partners, the ndp). even the carbon tax, as it exists, is a dusted off harper policy. the consequences of overpopulation in canada include a housing crisis and inflation, which has been worsened by energy prices, which has been caused by global instability. the number of people that actually believe the false narrative that inflation was caused by printing money, or that it was decreased by monetary policy, is very low, and the number of people voting for decreased spending will be even lower. almost nobody in canada wants decreased government spending or reduced government services.
rather, i would suspect that the actual driver of trudeau's low poll numbers, which are concentrated mostly in young people, is the selection of internet reform bills. young people can no longer access half of the internet via facebook, and while the pmo has blamed facebook, it's pretty clear that young people are blaming the pmo. nor do young people want their speech restricted by an over-reach of government.
these bills are unpopular and are probably what is actually driving trudeau's numbers down. it's not an exaggeration to state that, for many young people, trudeau ruined the internet.
this is a problem for two reasons.
the first is that the bills are supported by trudeau's political base, which is actually retired people that are voting for his father, and are afraid of the internet, because it's something new and scary and unknown. these bills are reactionary in the worst sense, but they are a reflection of the pmo's actual voting coalition, which is reactionary to it's core. the old folks love the guy, it's the kids that hate him. second, it is abundantly clear that trudeau believes in the idea of these bills and that trudeau, who has the psychology of a true believer, who is a dirty utopian idealist, will happily climb up on the cross to die for his beliefs, and is going to take the party and the country down with him.
the bills are illiberal. this is not a reaction against liberalism, but a reaction against illiberalism.
the party should mutiny against the leader and pull back on these illiberal policies, in order to try to rebuild it's base. a few years ago, it was the conservatives that were dead in the water when their aging base died. somehow, the liberals have managed to seize generational defeat from the hands of clear victory by becoming nanny state conservatives. when the seniors die, the liberals will have nobody left to vote for them, and evaporate into history. if they don't pull back from the brink, we're going to have some serious problems in this country, which is extremely liberal, and yet which has no liberal political representation to vote for. that is an algorithm for the rise of a populist movement, which trudeau has created by pushing forward illiberal policies, and which he claims to be trying to fight against.
i'm further left than most people, and i would be disenfranchised anyways, but what they're doing is multiplying me two or three planks to the centre, and creating a generation of disenfranchised voters that are also economically poor voters that are susceptible to demagoguery as a result of their disenfranchisement and their lack of economic status. these are not conservative voters and will not be interested in voting for the natural opposition in this country, these are disenfranchised liberals that can no longer support the governing party, because it no longer reflects the ideals and values of the country's majority and are going to end up supporting some kind of alt-right because they are liberals and it is at least libertarian, and not because it is economically or socially right-wing.
trudeau is clintonizing canada, and turning toronto into detroit. they need to get him out of there before it's too late.
the best thing trudeau can do to stop a populist movement in canada is resign, because he's the reason one is developing, and not an antidote or solution to it.