Could governments win back the goodwill they had during the pandemic? Maybe by building things

A funny thing happened during the depths of the pandemic: a plurality of Canadians felt their governments were having a positive impact on peoples' lives.

It didn't last. But perhaps governments should be thinking hard now about how they can engender such good feelings, even outside of moments of profound crisis.

In March 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning to impact life in Canada, the Environics Institute asked Canadians "what kind of impact … governments have on most people's lives."  Thirty per cent of survey respondents said governments had a positive impact, while 40 per cent said they had a negative impact. Environics found similar splits when it asked that question in January and October 2019.

By August 2020, there'd been a modest, but interesting shift — 36 per cent now said positive, while 34 percent said negative. 

That 36-34 split held up through the winter of 2020 and into February 2021. But as the threat of COVID-19 recedeed, so did the positive vibe. When Environics asked the question at the start of 2022, public opinion had snapped back to where it was before the virus took hold — 30 per cent said governments had a positive impact, 41 per cent said negative. 

The stories underneath polling numbers can be complicated. When voting intention and political ideology are considered, that negative sentiment seems to capture both conservative voters who might be inclined to favour less government and NDP voters who might wish their Conservative or Liberal governments were doing more. People who voted for a party that is now in office, either provincially or federally, also seem to feel better about what governments are doing.

More Canadians still say they prefer a "bigger government with more services" to a "smaller government with fewer services" and there's not enough data to determine whether or how public opinion on impact has shifted or deteriorated over the long-term. The current positive-negative split nearly matches what the Environics Institute found when it asked the same question in 2002. That might suggest that the current level of dissatisfaction is simply the default and not necessarily a sign of crumbling faith.

But it's still not ideal. And if the goal right now is to reinforce and build faith in democratic institutions then that negative sentiment looks like an area that deserves some attention — not just for progressives, who believe in active government, but for anyone who would like to see liberal democracy flourish anew.

The Environics Institute's findings make sense when you consider how most people probably experience government; we don't notice when it works, but we really notice when it doesn't. Many of the things that good government ensures: paved roads, clean drinking water, clean air, less corruption – are now baseline expectations. And when you have to line-up for hours to renew a passport or get on a plane, that easily overshadows the cheap public transit you took to get there or the Canada Child Benefit cheque that arrived a week ago.

That negative sentiment also aligns with how governments are generally covered by the media. As Bill Fox, a former Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star and a former director of communications to Brian Mulroney, notes in his book Trump, Trudeau, Tweets, Truth, "news stories by definition seize on what is wrong, what isn't working, who didn't get a cheque, what employer isn't eligible for a pandemic bailout."

Fox borrows Thomas Patterson's idea that the news has a negative bias. But during an appearance on the Herle Burly podcast earlier this year, Fox linked that tendency to the current concern about the public's faith in liberal democracy and its institutions. 

"It [reinforces] the idea … that governments actually don't get much done that's of any benefit," Fox said. "And that's problematic for western liberal democracies for sure."

Journalists might fairly respond that their emphasis on what's not working is an important part of holding governments to account and that doing so encourages governments to do better. But Fox also isn't wrong to suggest that cynicism about government could be a corrosive force that slowly undermines liberal democracy — and journalists might still ask themselves whether they're unwittingly contributing to that. 

But the biggest questions are for governments themselves.