There was once a Canada where a vast part of the country believed deeply in the virtues of Big Government. Where the public rallied behind a man named Pierre Trudeau who promised he could, by force of will and policy, command an economy and engineer a society. Three decades after Trudeau — no doubt, in large part, because of Trudeau — that Canada no longer exists. The nation today is one where people are disenchanted with grand government schemes and large national projects, with the idea that government is good at all that much besides maintaining law and order and defending our borders. Canadians in 2011 are about as soured on Big Government as you can get.
That’s what the annual Barometer survey released Wednesday by the Manning Centre for Building Democracy suggests. Conducted in the days after the federal election, and released on the eve of the victorious federal Conservatives’ national convention, the poll offers the most helpful insight yet into why the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in history. In all their years in power, one of the Liberals’ most lasting achievements, it seems, has been to turn Canadians against Liberalism.
[More]
