Michael F Schundler
2 min readMay 9, 2024

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Living in southern California, I meet Canadians on vacation in our "tourist" community on the ocean. They are pretty uniform that the government under Trudeau has screwed things up. My sense is their complaints focus on three areas (my links suggest the people I talk to are not atypical).

Immigration

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/world/canada/canada-migrants-immigration.html

The second set of issues center on "wokeness". A tolerant society tolerates things it does not agree with, it does not make them crimes. How a society treats offensive speech and offensive behavior says a lot about individual freedom in that county, if you don't allow for offensive speech and behavior, then you are not a "free society".

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/03/14/oh-canada-the-parliament-moves-to-impose-potential-life-imprisonment-for-speech-crimes/

The third set of issues relate to the economy overall. I have heard all sorts of negative comments about the state of the Canadian economy and potential causes of its current state being on the brink of recession. I don't follow it closely, buy the economy is clearly an issue.

In America, I don't think 2024 is about Trump or Biden, no matter how much Democrats try to make it about Trump. It is about the direction government will take over the next four years.

As one super accurate pollster commented, the "hate Trump" and "hate Biden" camps have neutralized one another. Leaving those people who care about policies in charge of how November turns out. The issue is whether Biden can pivot enough to regain some of the independents his policies have lost.

My sense is Canada is a bit different with respect to attitudes towards Trudeau playing a bigger role, but the core issues are not that different. Though how Canadians view those issues may be. With 51% of Canadians disapproving of Trudeau performance and 34% approving, he may be the reason, conservatives win.

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