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Immutable truth No. 2: Lynton Crosbie’s niqab gambit, if indeed that was the Australian consultant’s brainchild, was an unmitigated disaster. The party can’t win without support from new Canadians and ethnic and linguistic minorities, by the hundreds of thousands.

Immutable truth No. 3: The Harper Conservatives were always more Harper than conservative. The party can’t win unless it stands for principles that are coherent and consistent, distinct from its competitors’ and popular enough to push its vote share from 30 per cent, its rock-solid base, to 40 per cent or more, assuming a continuation of Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

Here’s the good news, for Conservative supporters: There is a way forward that addresses each of these points, and is in fact being eased by the Liberal and New Democratic parties’ own strategic shifts. And the bad news: It requires candid self-examination and a transformation in mindset, something for which Conservatives have in the recent past shown no appetite.

The backdrop, as I wrote about last time, is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now leads a de facto coalition of the Canadian centre-left that has absorbed all the electoral gains made by New Democrats in the Jack Layton era, while drawing in several million new voters, with support across all age ranges. Trudeau triangulates the electorate in a way few others could: Left-leaning Baby Boomers remember his dad, while Left-leaning millennials appreciate his youthful vibe. It remains to be seen how long this will last — but for now, he is a political force to be reckoned with.