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Scheer and the Conservatives are offering up a desperately needed change from the status quo

Fundamentally, in stark contrast to the incumbent Liberals, the Conservatives recognize that sound fiscal management is an unavoidable precondition for growing an innovative and productive economy.

But what the Conservatives are offering most of all is a break with the selfish, often preposterous leadership Canadians have seen these past four years. Trudeau is a recognized talent at political branding and optics — his government has been a highly polished PR machine, and the man himself, as he recently admitted in rather awkward circumstances, has a weakness for costumes and pageantry. This doesn’t only include his personal dress, and an awful habit of donning blackface makeup, but also his political career — Trudeau’s Liberals have shown themselves to be absolutely shameless in their willingness to promise one thing while delivering another. And they don’t seem to realize that Canadians have noticed.

Photo by Time Magazine

The repeated reversals are well known and need no thorough recounting here. But regardless of the specifics of any one proposal, the Liberals ought to have known how corrosive to public faith in our institutions their flagrant breaking of central planks of their election campaign would be. The same is true of his warring with the provinces, particularly Ontario and Alberta, despite his pledge for a more harmonious federation. And there are his pledges of reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians: When he wasn’t sarcastically thanking entirely justified Indigenous protesters from mercury-poisoned Grassy Narrows for their donation to the Liberal party as they were thrown out of an exclusive fundraising event, to much laughter from the assembled party elite, he was sacking his Indigenous justice minister and attorney general when she rightly refused to abuse her authority to cut a Liberal-friendly construction conglomerate a deal over their legal troubles. Trudeau explicitly promised a brief dip into deficits — to combat an economic slowdown that never really materialized — followed by a return to balance this year. In fact, the country is still in the red, and the Liberals have no realistic plan to balance in the medium term — and that’s assuming all goes well. In today’s tense geopolitical environment, that’s hardly a safe bet. And speaking of geopolitics, has anyone asked the United States, Europe, Russia or China if “Canada’s back”? Has anyone asked the Kurds? Outside of the odd global soirée, Canada’s presence on the world stage, and influence even with key allies, is virtually nil.