I didn't read the article, but as a Canadian I thought it was important to voice my dissent of Trudeau. He ran on a platform of electoral reform, and reneged after his election. Unfortunately, he looks pretty great compared to Trump, so the international community seems to think he's well-liked in Canada.
I like that trudeaumeter.ca website. It's a useful tool for seeing how he's doing and to hold the PM accountable to his campaign promises.
I was also disillusioned by his back-down on electoral reform. That reform is a fundamentally important change for Canadian democracy. It's an incredibly hard change to make, and I don't fault him for not succeeding yet, but he needs to keep on it. If he is, that's not being communicated well.
All that said, he's still a phenomenal leader. He acts on values he identifies as being truly Canadian more often than just "playing politics". His decisions aren't always popular, but he can always defend them with clarity. We just don't see that enough in global politics.
He's well liked by some, and hated by others, at home in Canada. But popularity does not make a great leader. It would appear Erdogan is loved by many in Turkey, does that make him someone you'd want to lead your country?
There will also always be those who don't share Trudeau's fundamental values - as would be true of any leader. They will never like Trudeau or agree with his choices or the reasoning for them as they simply have different goals. I think that's where democracy plays in. We vote for the party, and the leader, that represent not just our interests, but our values. The majority win and establish the values of the country.
The problem with most nations is the elected leaders no longer represent any coherent values or stick to them in a reliable way which results in elections and leaders being entirely interest-driven.
Trudeau also has a much higher approval rating, sitting at about 50% approval and 40% disapproval [1]. Trump is sitting at 38% approval and 55% disapproval [2]. Regardless of your opinion on them, Trudeau is more popular in Canada than Trump is in the US.
In my opinion, that decision is going to cost him the next election, so I find it both baffling and frustrating.
Despite his unpopularity Harper still received 32% of the vote. So I think that can be considered the floor for right wing party support in Canada. It's highly likely that Scheer will receive > 32% of the vote. He probably won't receive more than ~40% of the vote, but whatever he gets, it'll probably be enough to win given 3 party first past the post. (4 parties including the Bloc).
So then the Liberals, NDP & Bloc will split the remaining 60 - 65%. Under first past the post, those votes get split and the Tories take a bunch of those seats. If Trudeau had gotten his desired reform of ranked ballots then most of that would probably accrue to the Liberals and his majority would continue until he made a serious misstep.
But instead if the reform was to mixed member proportional as it appears most vote reformers want then alternative parties would get more of those seats. So the Liberal majority would be unlikely to repeat. However his chances of being able to lead a minority government in that situation seem fairly good.
So even though MMP benefits the NDP & Greens much more than it benefits the Liberals Trudeau should have thrown his weight behind it. I hope he enjoys his position on the opposition benches come 2020 and I hope Scheer is a competent leader because he's going to be our next Prime Minister.
It's also worth noting that the CBC editorial board was completely gutted and replaced during Harper's term, so the CBC has become the Canadian version of Fox News.
Personally I think he's doing a fine job and from what I can tell he is still well liked in Canada.
That was a mixed bag. The 2005 electoral reform referendum had 'yes' support of over 57%, however nothing happened because the BC Liberals (who, for our neighbours to the south, are small-c conservatives, not small-l liberals like our Federal Liberal party) set a super majority requirement.
The second referendum didn't pass, with only 40% saying 'Yes' to STV—however in both referendums the electorate were incredibly uninformed and both our major political parties did a poor job of supporting it; it's never in the interest of a party that could form a majority government (in FPTP rules) to enact electoral reform that could result in them not having a majority if they 'won'.
The Yes campaign ran a grass-roots oriented standard political campaign, with volunteer call centers, signs and standard political advertising.
The No campaign ran a mass-media (television) focused campaign that concentrated on airtime in the last two weeks (there was evidence to show, that 6 weeks before the referendum, very few people were even aware it was happening).
The 'No' television pieces told the electorate it was 'complicated' and there's no point in fixing something that's not broken. Most people didn't know anything about what was happening behind the scenes, just that television was telling them it would be more complicated and wasn't worth it. Most people left it at that and didn't look for the other side—the 'Yes' informative pieces were not in the same format, not in easily digestible televised promos. That is what I call uninformed. There was very little for the mass-consumer that was easily accessible. It doesn't help that the STV proposed was complicated, but no accessible advertising by the 'Yes' campaign was available to quell those fears.
Just because everyone got it in the mail, doesn't mean it was accessible. It was a complete failure of the 'Yes' campaign to realize who their audience really were. Those who were interested enough to read their materials probably were already willing to support the cause. Those who were not interested enough just listened to what the television was telling them: Vote No, Fear Change.
Re: informing on a national level
I do not believe a referendum is required to enact electoral reform. We have enough intelligent people that the best choice—or at the very least a better choice—can be made without forcing the electorate to make the choice between systems themselves. I do not trust the majority to support a minority, our societies continually fail at that. No one ever said we cannot change an electoral system again, in fact, in BC we've already done that in the distant past.
The Rolling Stone article compares Harper to Cheney and Trudeau to Obama. Is it possible that Canada might vote in a Trump in the next election cycle? Anything is possible I guess.
Also, I posted this not as a Harper Vs. Trump thing, but to see how each country is dealing with multiculturalism.
Thankfully we dodged that bullet already, the Conservative Party of Canada eschewed picking either of our 'Trump'-style Candidates: Kevin O'Leary with his bombastic, CEO brash attitude and Kelly Leech, the 'Canadian-values' 'Old-stock Canadians' candidate (read: racist dog-whistling).
The candidate they did pick, Andrew Scheer, is more like Stephen Harper than otherwise. He might (and in some ways is) try to pull a few pages from Trump's play book, but at least it's not the entire thing.
True, but he also is not terrible at policy and campaigning.
I learned my lesson when rob ford was elected. The man isn't much of a statesman but he can campaign with the best of them. While everyone was laughing at him, I worried over Scottish independence, brexit, and of course Donald trump.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-electoral-reform-whe...
http://trudeaumeter.ca
eta: not going to reply to every comment, so: yes, he is better than Trump; no, CBC is not smearing him.