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Comment by samdoesnothing | Hacker News Reader

> Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades

That's just blatantly untrue?

I'm basing that on the Prime Ministers, anyhow.

Jean Chrétien is the most recent Canadian Prime Minister that I remember a wide spectrum of Canadians liking (and by 2000, not as much). Justin Trudeau appealed many American journalists, but only to some Canadians.

If I missed an obvious politician, I will happily concede.

By gut feeling I’d agree on Chrétien, and there is some polling on this (which I think backs that up). This article compares favourability after first election for PMs going back quite a ways and Carney looks similar but slightly worse off than Trudeau or Harper.

https://angusreid.org/prime-minister-mark-carney-first-month...

Well then, I concede! To stick to my guns would require us to trade competing survey results from different pollsters. That's no fun, and unsatisfying, in any case.

Yeah but without that your just making stuff up and nobody wants that except you.

That is reasonable, and why I conceded the point. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where the notion got into my head, and it's a bigger pain then it might seem trawling search results to find current articles with peak approval for both men.

Actually.. Wikipedia to the rescue!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_prime_m...

  Highest approval rating
  1. Mark Carney — 67% (June 2025)
  2. Jean Chrétien — 66% (September 1994)
  3. Justin Trudeau — 65% (September 2016)

I'm sorry spark advocacy doesn't qualify as a good source (that's wikipedias source).

Then I concede a second time. Please pretend I originally wrote just 'Carney is popular enough that the opposition can use what help they can get'

I'm not an expert on Canadian pollsters, and poll numbers are not a subject of debate for which I have much enthusiasm.

Justin Trudeau when he was elected was the most popular politician in the country by a lot.

It's a huge drag to debate this issue because multiple pollsters have published polls of both Justin Trudeau and Carney, and the results are seldom identical. Consequently, there's a lot of research involved both of polls and pollsters, and the end result won't be conclusive.

It is worth noting, polls aside, that the Carney election both finished off the NDP, and resulted in Conservative Poilievre losing his seat. And recently, Conservatives have started crossing the floor to join Carney. Justin Trudeau was popular with Liberals. Carney is generally popular.

Justin Trudeau actually appealed to many younger Canadians as well, until he severely didn't, but that's how he got elected afaik. I don't think the numbers are out yet, but it was largely boomers who voted Carney in, everyone else that I've spoken to under the age of 40 is like "meh", and some regret voting him in after the Liberals' predictable reaction to the Air Canada strike.

Much like the rest of the g7, we have an aging population and a mega generational class divide. Our youth unemployment rate is high, jobs have dried up, it's a shitshow, and Carney hasn't tried to address this much.

So whether he's popular or not needs more context. He'd certainly be most popular with the richest and most populated generation ever, and potentially business owners, but we'll see.

Considering how much government spending goes to the elderly, either directly via programs like OAS and tax benefits or indirectly via healthcare, and it was only a matter of time before young people question their position in it all (higher schooling tuition/debt, bad job market, expensive housing, etc). OAS doesn't even start getting clawed back until personal income is over $90K and is only fully clawed back at $150K! And it's double that for a couple!

The timing of the last election was perfect for Carney when there was a window where the whole country was going WTF with Trump and PP was still railing against various "woke" grievances and mentioning Trudeau by name. The fact that he wasn't turfed after not only losing the election that was his to win, but also losing his seat, is everything wrong with the myopic federal Conservative Party (whose core members refuse to "compromise" with the rest of the country).

There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).

Yep agreed on all points. I like that there are a few local orgs (GenerationSqueeze, Missing Middle) bringing light to things like the portion of the federal budget allocated to OAS and how it's structured, and generally being real about present day inequities.

Carney will (hopefully) have to reckon with those in the coming year, while Pierre seriously missed a (the?) boat. It does feel like something big is shifting slowly.

> There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).

It's my impression that the balance between economic prosperity and social good needs to be constantly curated and revered as an inherent virtue of a democracy with strong social safety nets. It's much easier to get working age people to compensate for the ails of generations past if there's no doubt in their mind they'll have a roof over their head next year.

Progressive, often barely tangible issues, necessarily become internalized as luxurious if the people who could support them can't even pay for food.

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