New Delhi: Canada’s leader of Opposition and Conservative Party chief, Pierre Poilievre, is the most popular choice to lead the country if elections were held today, a new opinion poll conducted by market research and public opinion company Ipsos exclusively for Global News Canada has revealed.
The poll, which surveyed 1,500 respondents between 15 and 18 September, also showed that a majority of Canadians want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step aside as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party (NDP) to stop supporting the current minority government.
The results of the poll were made public Thursday amid the ongoing diplomatic tensions between Canada and India over the killing of Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, in June of this year.
According to the poll, four in 10 Canadians (40 percent) would vote for the Conservative Party under Poilievre today, while only 31 percent would choose current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
This is a significant shift from the last federal election held in 2021, when the Liberals won 160 seats with 32.6 percent of the total popular votes, while the Conservatives won the popular votes with 33.7 percent, but lost in the number of seats due to Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system — where individual candidates with the leading number of votes are declared winners.
According to Global News, Poilievre’s popularity has increased by five percent since last year, while Trudeau’s support has remained stagnant. It added that the main issues that matter for Canadians at the moment are cost of living, access to housing and inflation.
Trudeau’s poll numbers are a far cry from the highs of 2015 when the Liberal Party reportedly won 39.5 percent of the popular vote and 184 of 338 seats in Parliament.
The Ipsos poll also found that 60 percent of Canadians think it’s time for Trudeau to step aside as leader of the Liberal Party and hand over the reins to someone else in the next election, scheduled for 2025. The percentage of those who had voted for this in December last year was 54 percent.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who is in a governing arrangement with the Liberal Party, remains a distant third choice as PM for Canadians, with 22 percent picking him as their preferred choice. Year-on-year support for Singh has declined by four percent, the opinion poll revealed.
This month’s opinion poll also found 53 percent of the respondents believe that the NDP should stop supporting the current Liberal Party government and trigger an election immediately.
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Regional support for Poilievre
Poilievre leads across all the provinces and regions of Canada except for Quebec, where Trudeau has a slight edge over him, 34 percent to 23 percent, found the Ipsos poll.
The territories of Canada were not included in the poll.
In Ontario — the country’s most populous province — Poilievre was preferred by 42 percent of the respondents, compared to the 38 percent who voiced support for Trudeau.
In Atlantic Canada (consisting of the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island), Poilievre led over Trudeau by nearly 20 percent in preference.
This is significant because the Liberals swept the ridings (electoral district) in the Atlantic provinces in the 2015 elections.
Conservative leader calls for transparency
The poll results were published amid a diplomatic stand-off between Canada and India over the killing of Nijjar.
While Canada has accused India of being involved in the killing of Nijjar in June this year, India has denied the allegations and said “it is ready to cooperate… once any evidence is presented”.
On Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said both countries will be reducing their strength and rank of diplomats in New Delhi and Ottawa for mutual staff parity, “pursuant” to a request by India.
India Thursday also suspended its visa services in Canada.
Meanwhile, Poilievre has called for Trudeau to “come clean” with more information on the killing of Nijjar.
“I think the Prime Minister needs to come clean with all the facts. We need to know all the evidence possible so that Canadians can make judgments on that,” Poilievre is reported to have said during a media interaction Wednesday.
He further claimed that he had received the same information from the Prime Minister in private that was announced to the public.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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