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Trudeau Polimeter 2.0: 52% of Liberal election promises kept in full or in part

Québec City, August 31, 2021 – After nearly 22 months in office, Justin Trudeau's minority Liberal government has fulfilled in whole or in part 52%  of the promises made in the fall 2019 election: 23% of the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2019 election promises were kept in full and 29% were kept partially. Nearly half (48%) of the 343 promises made by Trudeau and his team during the 2019 election campaign have been broken. These are the main conclusions of the assessment prepared by the Polimeter team, which has been tracking and publishing the status of election promises made by various governments in Canada since 2013.

These results are in contrast to the results of Trudeau's first Liberal government (2015-2019).  By the end of its first mandate, the Trudeau government had 67% of its promises fulfilled, 26% partially fulfilled and 7% broken.

"The comparison between Trudeau 1.0 and Trudeau 2.0 demonstrates the importance of context in delivering on election commitments," says Lisa Birch, associate professor and executive director of the Centre for Public Policy Analysis at Université Laval. “Successive  crises such as  the tragic death of all passengers on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 to Canada caused by an Iranian missile (January 2020), the national rail crisis caused by solidarity demonstrations to support the Wet'suwet'en traditional leaders opposing the Coastal Gas Link Pipeline (February 2020), a new ethical scandal linked to the We Charity, and, of course,  the Covid-19 pandemic monopolized the government’s attention and contributed to these lackluster results compared to the first Trudeau mandate.”

"It is also important to note that minority governments keep fewer promises than majority governments, mainly because they shorten their mandate," says Antoine Baby-Bouchard, who has worked with the Polimeter team for many years. "By calling an early election, the Trudeau government did not have enough time to fulfill all of its promises. The majority of the promises we had labeled either as 'not yet rated' or 'in progress' in July 2021 became broken promises or, at best, partially fulfilled when this Polimeter was closed."

" Trudeau’s 2.0 pledge record reminds us that during elections, citizens give governments two mandates. The first one is to fulfill their electoral promises, which is called the imperative mandate. The second one is to govern according to their vision, values and ideology, which is called the representative mandate," noted Lisa Birch. "At the polls on September 20th, citizens will have the opportunity to judge the full record of this minority Liberal government as a crisis manager and a deliverer of election promises as well as the relevance of holding an election after only 22 months in office," she concluded.

A new web application for a richer and more user-friendly experience
The Polimeter is now available through a web application that provides a richer, user-friendly browsing experience. The new app offers enhanced features that allow sorting by government, pledge status, policy area and keyword. Users can view pledge fulfillment over time, view documents that support verdicts, and explore the performance of other governments. Polimeters have been available since 2013 for the governments of Quebec and Canada, since 2018, for New Brunswick and since 2021 for Ontario.

"We are pleased to dedicate this new web application to Professor Emeritus François Petry, (1948 - 2020), of the Department of Political Science at Université Laval, for his passion, rigor, and vision for a Polimeter that gives  citizens non-partisan information about the fulfillment of their elected officials' promises," said Lisa Birch, a close collaborator of Professor Petry's for 16 years. Since we started in 2013, François and I dreamed of an app like this that would allow citizens, media, and researchers to sort through and visualize promises on their own."

The new web application is available at www.polimetre.org/en/trudeau.

For information and interviews:
Lisa Birch
Centre for Public Policy Analysis 
Faculty of Social Sciences
Université Laval
418-609-3920
lisa-maureen.birch@capp.ulaval.ca
polimetre@capp.ulaval.ca

Source:
Jean-François Huppé
Media Relations
Université Laval
418-656-7785    
jean-francois.huppe@dc.ulaval.ca