OTTAWA—In politics as in life trust is hard to earn, but here’s another lesson courtesy of the pandemic: trust can be rebuilt. Canadians’ trust in government took a dive after last fall’s federal election, according to the international public relations firm Edelman. Voters knocked Justin Trudeau’s majority Liberal government down to a minority, and Canadians were unsettled afterward by what they saw on the national scene. They worried about increased tensions among political parties, a growing east-west divide and international trade challenges, says Lisa Kimmel, head of Edelman Canada. However, as the pandemic has unfolded, that distrust has eased. Edelman updated its global trust barometer this month showing a clear rise in public trust across several societal groups since January — in government, NGOs, media and business. The online survey gathered data from more than 13,200 respondents in 11 countries, including 1,200 in Canada. In Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, trust ratings for government spiked to a record high, said Kimmel. “We as Canadians were concerned about the ability of our institutions to actually lead us into the future,” she said in presenting the findings last week. “And with the emergence of COVID-19 there’s no question that our future is even more uncertain than ever before.” Yet since January the trust that Canadians place in government increased significantly. “We’re actually seeing a record high in trust, a 20-point increase over the last couple of months, to now 70” per cent trust in government, she said. It’s not as if things got better. In January, Canadians were shaken by an Iranian missile attack on a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed dozens of citizens and students headed here. In February, the economy was rattled by train blockades and Indigenous-led protests over a gas pipeline project. That came as the coronavirus outbreak began to spread around the world. By mid-March, Canada was in pandemic lockdown, a time of huge strain on our governments and institutions. So the rise of trust in government in Canada was far from given. The survey tapped into feelings not about any one political personality but about government writ large. Other pollsters are documenting similar rising approval numbers for government, and also higher personal approval ratings for some individual leaders. Abacus Data reported this week that the Liberal government’s approval rating is 58 per cent, something not seen since the heady days after its majority win in 2015. And after two months of lockdown many more Canadians approved of Justin Trudeau’s performance than in March. His positive numbers rose from 32 per cent to 47 per cent, while negative impressions of Trudeau plunged from 47 per cent in March to 31 per cent. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, booed at a Raptors victory rally a year ago, is soaring, according to the pollsters at Campaign Research. Personalities aside, the trust spike that Edelman identified is a reflection of several things: governments at all levels in Canada acted quickly and on a large scale in their response to the pandemic. Political leaders collaborated, showed themselves to be nimble, throwing out playbooks and moving swiftly to design income rescue packages, to approve experimental health research and products, and to purchase personal protective equipment in a “wild west” global market. They’ve worked with willing private-sector players. They’ve been supported by public servants who are doing the same thing — hustling help out the door. Politicians made a deliberate effort to be guided by medical advice, to let doctors and scientific experts do a lot of the talking — following lessons learned in the 2003 SARS outbreak. And they are making an effort to keep most of the usual federal-provincial disagreements behind closed doors, although The Star reported strains in that dynamic. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who chairs the Council of the Federation representing all 13 premiers and territorial leaders, voiced frustrations with Ottawa at the lack of prior consultation on several big aid programs and at suggestions Ottawa should have a greater say in areas of provincial responsibility, like long-term care for seniors or child-care services. So now, with Canadians in a third month of pandemic politics, and the country implementing staggered reopenings of the economy, will we see the trust last? Is it a trust bubble? What could erode it? The answer is any number of things: Leaders who appear to break the rules they set for the rest of us, visiting with their families like Ford did, or going to their cottage retreats like Trudeau did, while others cannot. A return to hyperpartisan rhetoric or off-key criticism. This is a risk for all parties at a time when Canadians have low tolerance for politics as usual. A failure of government measures and advice to keep pace with changing scientific information when it comes to reopening borders, screening travellers, or the wearing of masks by the general public, for example. At first, in February and March, the public health advice from Canada’s top doctor was that anyone who isn’t sick doesn’t need to wear a non-medical mask. That shifted in April when Dr. Theresa Tam said the medical evidence showed people with no symptoms may still be infectious so people could choose to wear masks where they cannot physically distance from others. In May, that permissive approach has shifted again to a stronger recommendation: federal and provincial health authorities recommend the public wear non-medical masks when they go out as part of the “new normal,” in the words of Nova Scotia chief medical officer Dr. Robert Strang. The shifts are never accompanied by a frank admission that the earlier advice was not correct, and that new action is warranted. Trust is fragile. It might be eroded by a failure by governments to deliver the promised aid, to be transparent about mistakes around their rushed efforts, or to be flexible. The Liberals quickly expanded the wage subsidy to employers from an initial offer of 10 per cent to 75 per cent. Trudeau recently adjusted the wage subsidy program again, extending it to the end of August, and expanding it to include more employers. But Trudeau has resisted objections by some premiers and the Conservative Opposition that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit or student benefits ($2,000 and $1,250 respectively) might be too rich, and act as a disincentive to workers. So far it’s hard to say if those need tweaking too. Trust is built by listening to those you disagree with. It has become clear in the crisis that governments must respect the legitimate role of Opposition parties to hold them to account. Power grabs do not go over well. The Liberal government made an early misstep with a bill that would have granted it unlimited tax and spending power with no parliamentary oversight until December 2021. It quickly reversed course. Maintaining trust will also depend on real fixes to myriad problems the pandemic has exposed. Talk is cheap. COVID-19 left Canadians feeling vulnerable as individuals — none of us had immunity to the novel coronavirus and it’s unclear whether our bodies develop antibodies even after getting infected. But with no vaccine in sight, and huge gaps in testing and contact tracing, we are still vulnerable to a second wave. The pandemic exposed key weaknesses in our systems and institutions: long-term care for seniors, cuts to public health that left us without adequate emergency stockpiles, and a lack of surge capacity in hospitals and ICUs. Our eyes were opened to how easily the pandemic disrupted global supply chains or just-in-time delivery systems, and how some of the country’s biggest employers, airlines, retail, hospitality and service sectors could be side-swiped. We realized how reliant we are on safe schools and child-care services for women to return to the workforce, how reliant we are on temporary foreign workers for food production lines, and how much we needed big telcos, big pharma, and even big government. No province alone could have undertaken the massive income supports that were needed. Now Canadians are trusting that governments will fulfil pledges to take a clear-eyed look at all that went wrong and fix it. Trudeau said recently that “COVID-19 will be one of those things that creates changes in our society. Our responsibility as a society, as government is to try and figure out how to minimize the negative impacts of those changes while maximizing the safety of Canadians.” Not everyone trusts him to keep his word. A scathing open letter to Trudeau by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute slammed Trudeau for failing to get the balance between health risks and economic safety right in the first place. The lockdown, in the view of two dozen signatories who call themselves “concerned Canadian thought leaders,” went too far and has jeopardized the economic well-being of Canadians. They said Trudeau, who has mused that restrictions could last a year or more, must stop positing an either-or choice and should instead trust Canadians to do the right thing. “The government must trust and empower Canadians to move prudently back to something approaching normal by giving us clear, non-technical statements of the best available information on which to base our decisions and then allowing and indeed encouraging us to take responsibility for ourselves and get back to work.” In other words, they’re saying, trust is a two-way street. Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tondamacc |