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OTTAWA — In contrast to the man he’d like to eject from the Prime Minister’s office, Andrew Scheer’s idea of a magical Christmas break does not involve billionaires or private islands.

Instead, he is preparing to head home to Regina with his wife Jill and five kids, to sit in his pyjamas with them until noon every day watching old movies like Home Alone 2, with its brief Donald Trump cameo.

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The Conservative leader will rise or fall on his extreme ordinariness — made all the more stark by the Prime Minister’s glamour. But as he points out, he doesn’t have much choice in the matter.

“I’m not going to try to compete on a certain level with Justin Trudeau. I can only be who I can be. But I am younger, I am modern and I have a different take on Conservative principles than my predecessors,” he said in a year-end interview in his Parliament Hill office this week. “People buy authenticity. When you look at political events, whether it’s Bernie Sanders on the left or Ron Paul on the right, people believe in authenticity and I think that’s what I can offer people.”