We are never going to see a Canadian electorate overcome with Andrew Scheer fever.

But we are going to soon learn if Canadians like him when they get to know him.

It is notoriously difficult for new opposition leaders to become known to the electorate between elections and Scheer’s challenge is that many Canadians have no idea who he is and have no opinion about him.

In some recent polls, four out of 10 respondents didn’t know enough about the Conservative leader to determine whether they approved or disapproved of his job performance.

But as MPs break for the summer, it is worth noting that Scheer has shown remarkable staying power as a legitimate threat to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and he appears to have caught the prevailing political breeze, at least for the time being.

When the Commons next convenes in September, we will be into the beginning of an unofficial year-long federal election campaign.

For Scheer, that will mean increased scrutiny. For Trudeau, it will be a year of living dangerously.

Scheer neither looks nor sounds dangerous to voters. It is hard to find him dislikeable and he is anything but polarizing. He has kept his social policy views to himself and he has tightened his grip on the caucus, moving against lightning rods and loose cannons.

Maxime Bernier was stripped of his shadow cabinet post, Lynn Beyak was booted from the Conservative Senate caucus, Brad Trost lost his nomination and Kellie Leitch will not run again.

He has performed well in the Commons, aided by a front bench that includes a number of former cabinet ministers.

He won a byelection in the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, snatching it from Trudeau’s Liberals.

All of the above, of course, matters much if you are a Conservative strategist, but matters not a whit to Canadian voters who don’t watch question period, hang on Conservative caucus matters or pay attention to byelections.

Scheer and his caucus have spent day after day railing about the price to consumers of Trudeau’s national climate plan, taunting the Liberals about their “carbon tax cover-up” without providing any plan of their own. But there is scant evidence that this has resonated much beyond the Centennial Flame.

This is where Scheer needs the help of the Doug Ford bullhorn.

The Ontario premier-designate will court confrontation with Trudeau over carbon pricing. He will lose, but Ford, not Scheer, will elevate climate change into a national debate and he will be the main protagonist as federal-provincial relations devolve for the Liberals.

The election in Alberta of Jason Kenney will only add another powerful voice to the anti-Trudeau chorus.

When Trudeau returns to the Commons in September, he will be carrying with him a multi-billion dollar pipeline project and the inevitable confrontation with protesters at the Trans Mountain expansion in British Columbia.

He will be dealing with the economic fallout of a trade war with Donald Trump and he will be a month away from delivering on a signature cannabis legalization pledge.

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That, too, carries peril for Trudeau.

A seamless rollout is crucial, but likely too much to ask.

There will be court action over home-grown plants, there will be complaints from police and premiers, there will be questions about impaired driving, proximity of outlets to schools and too few outlets to thwart the black marketeers.

There will be questions about scrutiny at the U.S. border and amnesty for those convicted of possession.

Conservatives are poised to try to score points on every stumble, real or imagined.

But Trudeau still holds important cards.

He gets a reset, likely through a prorogation and a throne speech, crafting the agenda for the final year of his term, being proactive, not reactive, as has been too often the case in the past year.

He can shuffle a cabinet that looks a little long in the tooth.

If Jagmeet Singh cannot lift the NDP off its sick bed, Trudeau will own the progressive vote in a country where the progressive vote still holds sway.

He can put a national pharmacare plan in the window, move away from a penchant for preaching and apologizing and concentrate on improving the lot of the middle-class voter he needs for re-election. He can aggressively assert that he is on the right side of the climate debate.

So far, Scheer has consolidated the same share of the vote Stephen Harper won in 2015. He has about 16 months to prove he has appeal beyond his base.

Tim Harper is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @nutgraf1

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