But that doesn’t mean the Conservatives can afford to be complacent heading into the next federal election
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Political myths die hard in this country – and one of the oldest, fuelled by the federal Liberals for decades, is that voters only worry about the Conservatives having a “hidden agenda.”
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Except that’s not true.
Canadians are also worried Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have a “hidden agenda.”
Trudeau and company, with Liberal government House leader Karina Gould currently leading the charge in sounding particularly hysterical on this issue, are once again making this claim.
According to the Liberals, every Conservative leader going back to the days of Preston Manning and the Reform party has had a “hidden agenda,” including Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer, Erin O’Toole, and now, Pierre Poilievre.
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Typically, it’s to ban abortions, privatize medicare, abolish gun control or most infamously, since it was so over-the-top that it was widely ridiculed at the time, send in armed soldiers to take control of Canadian cities (Liberal campaign ad 2006).
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What Harper had actually proposed, given that some major cities in Canada lacked any military presence, was to create battalions of 500 regular troops and reservists to help respond to domestic emergencies such as natural disasters, as well as being capable of being deployed to fight abroad.
This time the Liberal allegation is that Poilievre must have something to hide due to his refusal to undergo a security check so he can read confidential government documents on foreign interference by some Canadian parliamentarians, while Poilievre argues doing so would gag him from publicly discussing the issue.
While the Bloc, NDP and Green Party leaders have all accepted Trudeau’s offer to view the confidential documents, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair agrees with Poilievre, saying he would never have accepted the deal either.
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Ipsos pollster Darrell Bricker has been tracking this issue for two decades and reported that heading into the 2021 federal election, Canadians were, for the first time, more worried about Trudeau and the Liberals having a hidden agenda (36%) than the Conservatives, headed at the time by O’Toole (32%).
That poll also found 46% of Canadians surveyed believed Trudeau would say anything to get elected, compared to only 29% for O’Toole.
A year later, in September 2022, Ipsos reported that 28% of Canadians surveyed believed Trudeau had a “hidden agenda” compared to 30% for the then newly-elected Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
By September 2023 that trend had reversed, with more Canadians surveyed believing Trudeau had a “hidden agenda” (35%) than Poilievre (32%) and more voters trusting Poilievre (26%) than Trudeau (20%).
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As Ipsos reported at the time, “More Canadians think Poilievre is someone they can trust (+7 compared to Sept. 2022), while at the same time more Canadians believe that Trudeau has a hidden agenda (+7 compared to Sept. 2022).”
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That doesn’t mean the Conservatives can afford to be complacent heading into the next federal election.
In the 2021 election, for example, confusing and convoluted answers from O’Toole on whether the Conservatives planned to lift a ban on 1,500 makes and models of guns Trudeau and the Liberals classified as “military-grade weapons” allowed them to successfully raise allegations of a Conservative hidden agenda during the campaign.
Pollster Angus Reid reported in September of this year that almost half of Canadians surveyed (46%) are fearful of the Conservatives winning the next federal election with 54% worried Poilievre has a hidden agenda that won’t be revealed until after the election if the Conservatives win.
However, that poll didn’t include similar questions about the concerns Canadians have that Trudeau and the Liberals also have a hidden agenda going into the next federal election.
It does explain why the Liberals are again attacking Poilievre and the Conservatives on the hidden agenda issue, especially since nothing else they have attempted until now has dented the Conservatives’ double-digit lead over them in the polls for months.
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