A politician’s political life doesn’t last forever, but it shouldn’t have ended this way. Trudeau had a bright, optimistic and inclusive vision of Canada and at this point the party ahead in the polls stands for the polar opposite.
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| In happier days, at the Montreal Pride Parade, August 2016 |
In 2015 Trudeau ushered in Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, evenly split between men and women. He helped see Canadians through the early days of the COVID pandemic with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) which was instrumental in keeping Canadian COVID fatalities markedly lower than those of the United States. In recent years Trudeau increased Old Age Security (OAS) benefits for seniors seventy-five and older by ten percent, launched a national $10-a-day child care program, and a dental care program for seniors and under 18s with an annual family income of less than $90,00.
The new social programs are unlikely to survive under a Conservative government and cuts to others, including healthcare funding, would likely be harsh. Poilievre voted to stop the dental care program, and a pharmacare program providing free diabetes and birth control, and in 2023 he voted to cut funding for surgery and emergency room wait times by $196.1 billion. Under a Conservative federal government pensions would be slashed too. Poilievre has already voted to increase eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement eligibility from sixty-five to sixty-seven. In 2021 he also voted against the ten percent increase to OAS for seniors seventy-five and older. (Read more about Pierre Poilievre's record on pensions here.)
