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Most, Least Popular Premiers For December 2018 Ranked In Angus Reid Institute Poll

Only two premiers got majority approval ratings.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault received a strong approval rating in the Angus Reid Institute's latest ranking of the most and least popular premiers, while Alberta's Rachel Notley saw a slight uptick in her score.
The Canadian Press
Quebec Premier Francois Legault received a strong approval rating in the Angus Reid Institute's latest ranking of the most and least popular premiers, while Alberta's Rachel Notley saw a slight uptick in her score.

It seems the shine hasn't worn off some of the country's newest provincial leaders.

The Angus Reid Institute's latest ranking of Canada's most and least popular premiers has found that Quebec's Francois Legault and Saskatchewan's Scott Moe are the only two leaders with majority approval ratings.

Legault, who led his Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) to a stunning victory in October, won a majority mandate that gave the province its very first non-Liberal or Parti Quebecois-led government in almost half a century.

Earlier On HuffPost: Legault Wastes No Time Delivering On Campaign Promises. Story Continues Below:

Though he's not that far into his term, Legault has made some moves in the time between the election and the holiday break. His government has moved to reduce immigration to the province and has demanded the federal Liberals cough up $300 million to cover the cost of refugees arriving in Quebec.

The CAQ has also followed through on a campaign promise to increase the legal age to consume and purchase cannabis in Quebec to 21.

Check out the rest of the premier rankings in the slideshow below:

Canada's Least, Most Popular Premiers (December 2018)

Moe, meanwhile, seems to have held on to the solid support enjoyed by his predecessor Brad Wall since he took over the job in January.

The leader has become a vocal critic of the federal government's carbon pricing plan and helped kickstart a bloc of premiers fighting it. His government also launched a legal challenge to the pricing program, which the feds plan to impose on any province that doesn't have an emission reduction plan of its own. The carbon price outlined by Ottawa starts at a minimum of $20 per tonne and rises by $10 annually until 2022.

Saskatchewan asked its Court of Appeal to rule on whether imposing that plan on provinces is constitutional. The province believes its own climate change plan, which doesn't include a carbon tax, is enough to reduce emissions.

Angus Reid Institute

Note: Prince Edward Island was not polled in the Angus Reid Institute's survey because the sample size of that province is too small.

Ontario's Doug Ford, another newcomer to the provincial leader scene, received an approval rating of 42 per cent.

Unlike other recently elected leaders, Ford has dominated the headlines since he turfed the Ontario Liberals back in June with some controversial moves like reverting the province's sex education curriculum to one used in the '90s, axing the province's cap-and-trade system and cancelling the province's basic income pilot project.

But perhaps the most contentious move from Ford came in September, when he became the first Ontario premier to invoke the notwithstanding clause. The premier opted for the measure to override a court ruling that stunted his plan to slash the number of Toronto city councillors in the middle of a municipal election campaign.

In recent months, he's also emerged as a flag-bearer in a brawl against the Liberal government's carbon pricing plan. Ford joined Jason Kenney, Alberta's United Conservative Party leader, at a rally railing against what they call a "job-killing tax" as well as jumping into Saskatchewan's court challenge against it.

Liberal premiers at the bottom

The country's newest premier, New Brunswick's Blaine Higgs, has an approval rating of 40 per cent, though 26 per cent of respondents said they're still not sure about his performance. That's unsurprising, since Higgs only took over in November after former Liberal premier Brian Gallant was turfed in a confidence vote.

At the bottom of the rankings are the only two Liberal premiers left: Newfoundland and Labrador's Dwight Ball and Nova Scotia's Stephen McNeil.

McNeil's approval rating of 30 per cent might put him in last place, but his score is still above the epic depths plumbed by former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, who was ranked Canada's least popular premier in every Angus Reid Institute ranking since September 2016.

The Angus Reid Institute's poll was conducted online from December 12-19, 2018 among a representative randomized sample of 3,554 Canadian adults who are members of the Angus Reid Forum. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

With files from The Canadian Press

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