Can Trudeau reverse Tory momentum?

Still plenty of fights to be had in final days before the vote

In two weeks, Canada will have a new government. Until last week, that government promised to look a lot like the old government: a Liberal minority, possibly a majority, but Liberal nonetheless. Then, something curious happened. The Liberals made a series of missteps, from manipulating a video to defending a candidate accused of sexual impropriety. Unlike the other parties, they seemed in no rush to present a platform, until leader Justin Trudeau finally did the grand reveal last Wednesday. Meanwhile, two French leaders' exchanges took place; in both, Conservative Leader Erin O'toole and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh acquitted themselves very well, and voters took notice. And suddenly, an actual race broke out.

If the vote were held today, poll aggregator 338.com has the Tories at 34.6 per cent, the Liberals at 31.4 per cent and the NDP at 19.6 per cent. When the margin of error is factored in, it's a dead heat between the two front-runners. The quirks of vote distribution also mean that despite their lead, the Conservatives might not be able to get enough seats to form government. Then again, that could change, too: the latest survey from Ipsos shows that a split in the centre-left vote could allow Conservatives to come “up the middle” as they did under Stephen Harper in 2011.

But the story now is not about the moment, it's about the momentum. For the past 10 days, the Tories have been trending upwards, the Liberals, dropping down. If this pattern holds until election day, it could push the Conservatives over the top, if not to the 170 seats needed for a majority, then to a solid minority position.

Still, there are clouds on O'toole's horizon. A consummate campaigner, Trudeau will not go down without a fight, and there are still plenty of fights to be had. The trifecta of guns, germs and steel (to borrow from author Jared Diamond's 1997 bestseller) could threaten to reverse the Tory trend.

This past weekend the Liberal leader accused O'toole of wanting to legalize assault rifles in exchange for the support of the “gun lobby.” In response, not only did O'toole repeat his position that he would maintain the Liberals' existing ban on assault-style weapons, but the Conservative party took the “rare step” of amending its platform to match his words, adding a footnote which reads, “All firearms that are currently banned will remain banned.” It remains to be seen, however, whether voters will believe the reversal — or whether it will backfire by angering supporters of the original policy.

Then there are the germs. With the fourth COVID wave rising and elective surgeries being cancelled again in some hospitals, vaccination remains a hot-button issue. Expect the Liberals to keep pressing it. O'toole refuses to demand that his candidates be vaccinated, despite setting a 90 per cent vaccination rate for Canada. And one of his MPS, David Yurdiga, recently said that requiring federal public servants and employees in federally regulated industries to get their shot is a “tyrannical” idea. The last thing O'toole needs is to be lumped in with the anti-vax and anti-government crowd, whose protests at Liberal events are growing uglier by the day.

Finally, there is the steel. Or more specifically, the economic renewal that would produce it. Unlike the Liberal platform, the Tories' platform isn't costed, but was recently estimated to clock in at $100 billion over 10 years. How a Conservative government would balance the books over the same time period without cuts is debatable and will form a sure line of attack for Trudeau during the upcoming French and English debates. Again, the issue is trust: can voters really trust O'toole to follow through on a position that flies in the face of traditional Tory thinking?

To reverse the Conservatives' momentum, Trudeau will try to convince voters that O'toole is a right-wing wolf in centrist clothing. But coming from a prime minister who still cannot answer why he plunged the country into an election, apart from wanting to win a majority government, that old “hidden agenda” trope rings rather hollow. And with only two weeks to go, rather desperate as well.