Seems to be based on people’s opinions and not a lot of hard evidence.
So if I asked you who had better governance Germany, France or the Netherlands you might rank them Netherlands, Germany, and finally France all based on how little you’ve heard from each country. Almost no one talks about Canadian governance so we’re already a step ahead! 
This is purely a study of reputation by people with, clearly, a surfeit of knowledge. I’m not a guy who cares about “nice hair” or socks, but maybe it makes a difference?
Since it is opinion based, you have to wonder how much of it is comparative to the USA even if not asked explicitly. This is a common problem in Canada that we compare ourselves to the USA and give ourselves a pat on the back for not being as bad as them. It is unfortunate because it leads us to not address our issues with say systemic racism because our issues are not as evident. So with everything happening in the USA, you can imagine if a pollster asked “What is your opinion of Canadian government with respect to: 1) transparency, 2) corruption, etc.” the answer might be “8 out of 10”, even if an explicit comparison to the USA was asked for.
That’s a really good point. “Well, we aren’t the complete shitshow that the USA is, so we’re doing really well!” I’ve said online quite a few times now when people talk about wanting to move to Canada that we’re heading down the same path as the US. 
I would echo both of these comments 100%. Although this is a subject for a different thread: As great example, I was living outside of Canada when the pandemic started to hit, but when I returned to Canada and I saw what a completely utterly fucked up delayed response the Trudeau government had initially, I came to truly believe that he and some of his ministers or staff should be charged criminally with manslaughter for the needless deaths of Canadians (and I do seriously mean that).
I have no desire to engage in a debate about the facts here but the reality is that CDN govt did nothing to screen new arrivals or tighten border controls in February & March when most other countries were already acting.
I would defy anyone to have a rational discussion of the facts of the actual Canadian response timeline without Trudeau defenders ultimately pointing out that “at least we’re not as bad as the US”. Literally every time I’ve had this discussion that’s how it ends.
What a horribly low bar we hold ourselves to.
I’m hardly a Trudeau defender but Canada seems to have done reasonably well. Other than Japan (better), Russia and USA (worse), Canada has had a similar response to other G7 and similar nations. It is a novel virus that rapidly spread. Responding to it would not have been easy, and still isn’t easy (e.g., how do you get people who refuse to wear a mask and socially distance to be responsible?). Using the power of hindsight it is certainly possible to say X or Y should have been done better or sooner. But let me ask you this. Pick any point in time early on in the COVID-19 response, and using only the information available at that time, and taking into account the economic, social, legal, and political factors, what would you have done differently?
Middle of the pack. I put it down less to incompetence as an inability to imagine an actual pandemic. SARS/MERS never seemed to me to stick in the general public’s imagination. At this point the complete lack of a top tier contact tracing system infuriates me - though that is a provincial/federal failing.
A manslaughter charge requires the commission of an underlying criminal offence, such that a death could be foreseen.
What underlying criminal offence do you believe the PM and the ministers committed?
Being Liberal? 
Sorry sorry, that’s clearly wrong. My bad. Not being Conservative. 
Criminal allegations against politicians for their policy decisions are a serious matter. We’ve seen it repeatedly in the US over the past four years with chants of “Lock them up!” I don’t want to see it become commonplace in Canada.
If there are credible grounds to think a government official or politician has committed a crime, obviously that needs to be investigated. But routine allegations of criminal misconduct over legitimate political and policy choices have a corrosive effect on the rule of law and the democratic system.
This is also my biggest fear with Canadian politics. It is concerning to me how much support there is for Donald Trump in Canada.
I don’t know if you are in Alberta, but the support for Trump here is frighteningly high. Our new premier, Kenney, is obviously very much an acolyte of Trump, and a huge percentage of Albertans think that is wonderful.
I’m in Saskatchewan. There’s a lot of here too. And yes, I see what is happening in Alberta. My concern is that the Conservative party will go that route to appeal to their base in AB and SK, and from there it will spread to Conservative supporters throughout the country. My MP is Conservative. I email him time to time with my concerns about the direction the Conservative party is taking. I can only hope it isn’t falling on deaf ears.
Support for Trump in Canada has consistently been 10-15%. Much of this is “one-issue” people: gun enthusiasts, tax haters, Internet addicts, attention seekers, social conservatives, the intolerant, those who crave dictatorship, shyte disturbers, trolls, malcontents, those who despise politics, the chronically unhappy and religious people who lack a better alternative.
Trudeau and his government knew or should known that deliberately delaying a response to Covid was going to cost Canadian lives by allowing the virus to establish itself and become endemic in Canadian communities.
There are many sources available which I’m sure you can search online, including MacLean’s magazine National Post and even the Toronto Star that have published articles on how Trudeau and his ministers is made a deliberate decision to not take any action on Covid, even while the shit was hitting the fan in other G7 countries. Canada and Brazil were two of the very last countries on the planet to institute any sort of border controls.
Why? All of the sources I’ve read are consistent in saying that Trudeau was concerned that even asking a question like “have you been to Wuhan China lately”, let alone doing things like proper border screenings or temperature checks etc. risked alienating China further and he wanted their support for his security council seat.
When they realized the game they were playing in trivializing the risk and doing nothing was a massive mistake, Tam went from being told to tell Canadians there is “minimal public health risk from Covid” to being told to declare a full lockdown state of emergency in less than 36 hours - WTF?
Plus, contrary to most Canadian’s perception Tam is not an “independent” medical advisor to the government. She reports to the Minister of Health. In all her press conferences she was literally reading from a script prepared for her by the minister and Trudeau, saying exactly the party line they instructed her to say word for word.
In other words he deliberately and with great malice aforethought put pandering to the Chinese government, higher on his priority list than Canadian lives. That is absolutely criminal in my mind.
But the good news is at least we’re not as bad as the states, eh?
It has already spread - we have six premiers who are Conservatives.
I saw the stats recently on how Canada has been doing with the pandemic, and I was surprised and disappointed by our performance. I can’t think of a good reason for our country to be doing as badly with this pandemic as we are. 
Actually I think that the memory of SARS is part of why our initial response to Covid-19 was not ideal: the government responded as if it were SARS. SARS is significantly deadlier, but also significantly less contagious. The initial response was aimed more at isolating positive cases to prevent any community spread whatsoever, and less at trying to decrease but not entirely eliminate transmission while imposing the least restrictive measures compatible with that goal.
In that light, the lack of travel restrictions was a reasonable choice. With SARS the biggest problem wasn’t people bringing the virus into the country. It was the spread of the virus in hospitals. I recall, back in Jan/Feb, various health officials patting themselves on the back about how ready we were with better-equipped isolation wards in hospitals, and protocols to prevent spread to hospital staff. We were, as they say, fighting the last war rather than the current war.
If we had it to do over again, knowing what we now know about Covid-19, I’m sure health officials would make different recommendations. But we didn’t know then what we do now, so that’s not terribly relevant. Arguably health officials should have recognized the significance of the differences between SARS and Covid more quickly, but those kinds of shifts are always difficult.
On his blog Philippe Lemoine makes the claim that essentially all Western countries took much too long to put measures (including border controls) in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The Trudeau government can definitely be criticized for its slow response, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily done worse than governments of other comparable countries.
Still not seeing an underlying unlawful act that would support a manslaughter charge.