Bad News for Stephane Dion: Canadians Not Buying Liberal Swill

And all that whining for nothin', too...

After spending the better part of a year complaining about the alleged disastrousness of the Conservative government, Stephane Dion can't be happy about Nik Nanos' newest polling numbers.

While Dion has, to date, spent his time as Leader of the Opposition lodging some rather predictable complaints about the government, including resorting to complaining about the "unfairness" of its budget or simply calling the government "mean", it turns out that Canadians simply aren't buying into Dion's claims about how regressive and un-Canadian the government allegedly is.

In the poll, when asked how good a job they thought the government was doing, 10.1% responded "very good". 29.4% said the government was "good". A whopping 38.1% graded the government as "average". Only 9% and 9.4% graded the government as "poor" and "very poor", respectively.

So, it turns out, despite all of Dion's hard work trying to find that magical wedge issue that would drive Canadians away from the government, an overwhelming 77.6% of Canadians rate them as average or better.

And while Conservative partisans should restrain themselves from jumping for joy -- after all, an assessment of the government as "average" doesn't necessarily denote satisfaction with that government -- this poll does spell bad news for Stephane Dion.

The argument that Dion would be more popular if only he were more personable can now be largely discarded. It's hard to justify constantly denouncing the government as disastrous (or even potentially disastrous) when the public at large has judged them to be no more (or, conversely, less) disastrous than previous governments.

If Dion continues his favoured line of rhetoric, he could find himself further alienated from the Canadian electorate.