COVID-19: Citizen support for provincial governments waning

In Canada the provincial governments have wide-ranging power and authority. In this time of the pandemic for example orders of lockdowns have come from each province separately, and  in addition to federal programmes, provinces have also instituted various funding programmes to help businesses adversely affected by pandemic measures.

While Canadians have generally been quite supportive of their provincial governments handling of the pandemic and financial issues, a new survery shows that support is slipping quite substantially.

The national survey by the Angus Reid Institute show Canadians are most concerned about the economy, health care, and COVID-19. although respondents in each province have those concerns as different priorities. For example in Canada’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, Ontario respondents listed  COVID and Healthcare as number 1 and 2 in priority while Quebec reversed that order.

Provincial Spotlight: As pandemic wears on, governments losing support on economic, COVID-19 management

As to how well each provincial government was handling the COVID-10 issue, all provinces except Newfoundland and Labrador, indicated a strong drop in confidence over the past few months.

A perhaps interesting statistic was a comparison of  how good a job was being done by the Premier of their province in handling the COVID-19 response compared to the provincial health officer. It is also worth noting that in most cases, up until the pandemic, most people had never heard about their provincial health officer.

The number of people saying their province has done a good job handling the economy (during the crisis) June to November has declined substantially as well, although as an average, more than half of all Canadians approve  of their provincial government.

On other issues of housing affordability and on poverty and homelessness, approval of provincial governments was generally around the 25 per cent level on both issues.