Canadians are souring on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s management of public finances, with a new poll showing just 27 per cent trust him most among Canada’s political leaders to support economic growth, down from 35 per cent before the pandemic.

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Trudeau’s chief rival, is trusted most by 30 per cent of respondents, a slim lead that’s within the margin of error of the survey conducted by Nanos Research for Bloomberg.

Poilievre has the most support on the economic question by voters under the age of 54, while older voters lean toward Trudeau. That may, in part, reflect the Conservative leader’s message of trying improve housing affordability by making it easier for developers to build homes.

Trudeau is strongest in the eastern provinces of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while Poilievre has a large lead in the country’s west, including British Columbia. In Ontario — Canada’s most populous province, where elections are often decided — Poilievre has a slim lead of four per cent.

“Trust in Trudeau to support economic growth continues to be down from 2019 levels,” pollster Nik Nanos said by email. He added that, with 20 per cent of respondents not trusting any party, dissatisfaction extends beyond the governing Liberals. “Canadians who think they can trust none of the leaders has doubled over the past four years, suggesting an increasing level of frustration and anxiety on economic issues.”

Trudeau’s decline in support on this issue over the past four years likely reflects the extraordinarily volatile economy during that period.

His government ran up massive deficits during COVID-19 to pay for support programs for workers and businesses. Trudeau also changed finance chiefs in 2020, when Bill Morneau resigned amid a public rift with the prime minister.

Morneau was succeeded by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who kept the spending taps open before winding down broad income supports. Like many other economies, Canada then saw inflation jump to the highest in four decades, with the central bank beginning a rapid rate-hiking cycle to try to bring it back down to the two per cent target.

Last month, Freeland unveiled a budget that added $43 billion in net new costs over six years, with most of it earmarked for health-care funding and clean-tech subsidies. The budget projects higher deficits and no return to balanced books forecast.

Trudeau and Freeland have said subsidies for green energy projects and technologies are necessary to develop low-carbon industry in Canada and compete with U.S. incentives. Still, Trudeau has come under heavy criticism from some economists for the amount of debt he’s taking on.

“The industrial transformation our economies require is huge,” Freeland told reporters in Washington on Friday. “It’s going to take a lot of money and governments are going to need to invest so that private capital gets involved.”

In a separate poll question, Nanos found that 40 per cent of Canadians see no difference in Freeland and Morneau’s management of public finances. More people in Ontario and the west said Morneau did a better job, while those in Quebec favour Freeland.

The Nanos poll surveyed 1,063 Canadians by phone and online random between April 2 and April 6. It is considered accurate to within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Bloomberg.com