The first duty of a prime minister is to not damage the country. One sure way to damage it, history tells us, is to do nothing when extremists spread hate against a group of fellow citizens. We have a far more frightening situation today.

The prime minister himself is orchestrating a campaign of bigotry, covertly and not so covertly, against Muslims, who are arguably as vulnerable a group as were Catholics, Jews, Japanese or Chinese Canadians at various times in our history. In trying to win votes by dividing Canadians, Harper is violating the most sacred of Canadian values, unity.

This is what Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau and Elizabeth May, to their credit, are saying, loudly and clearly.

Either Mulcair or Trudeau would make a good prime minister for a multitude of other reasons as well.

Neither would run a one-man government. Or treat civil servants as enemies. Or silence scientists. Or kill detailed census data gathering. Or twist foreign and refugee policies to pander to selected ethnic communities. Or undermine democracy. Or make Canada a pariah in the world. Under either leader, Canada would win a seat back at the U.N. Security Council.

Mulcair has been an effective leader of the opposition. He is a formidable debater. But Canadians haven’t warmed up to him. “Angry Tom” tried a charm offensive, only to come across as faking it. A turncoat, he had a reputation of not being a team player when he was a Quebec Liberal minister. Now without consulting the NDP rank-and-file, he has promised a balanced budget in his first year as prime minister. Besides turning the party’s orthodoxy on its head, his unilateralism has a whiff of Harper’s.

Far more troubling is Mulcair’s proposition that Quebec can secede with a 50-plus one vote. This is against the law of the land, the Clarity Act. Quebecers have a democratic right to quit Canada but they must first obtain a clear majority on a clear question.

About Trudeau’s economic and social blueprint, we can quibble – modest deficits to stimulate the economy, tax cuts for the middle class, funds for carbon reduction and getting illegal handguns off the streets, etc. But, overall, his program is sensible.

He was the first to attack the Parti Quebecois’ odious Charter of Quebec Values. He was ahead of Mulcair on the niqab issue, giving a thoughtful Barack Obama-style speech in March, laying down secular principles on how to accommodate individual religious rights without harming the common good.

His weakest moments are well known. He was mute during Israel’s 2014 onslaught on Gaza. He buckled under Harper’s populist pressure to commit Canada to yet another American war in the Middle East, and to pass the draconian Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-51). Trudeau was both for and against both. He has since worked out plausible-sounding explanations – he tried to strike a balance between war-mongering and being helpful, providing security without sacrificing freedoms.

He is promising stronger civilian oversight over the spy agencies. While Mulcair has mounted a strong opposition to C-51, it’s worth recalling that he initially hesitated and had to be pushed into voting against it by NDP elders, like Ed Broadbent.

The Conservatives say Trudeau is not ready. He is far more ready than Harper ever was in 2006. And that he is too young. He is as old as John Kennedy was when he entered the White House. To the insinuation that he’s leader only because he is Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s son, the answer is that he had a great teacher who, besides giving him classical education and making him recite reams of poetry, grounded him in the values of bilingualism, multiculturalism and the Charter of Rights, the DNA of contemporary Canada. This is reflected in Justin Trudeau’s command of the issues, as seen in the three leaders’ debates.

He carries no torch for regional grievances. His sense of Canada is greater than the sums of its parts.

He has a vision of Canada, grounded in the innate decency of Canadians. He has shown flashes of statesmanship: “Conservatives are not our enemies. They are our neighbours.”

He does not display personal insecurities. He doesn’t feel threatened by others. He listens. He is a team player, has gathered experienced former ministers and bright young new talent, who would constitute a good cabinet.

He has run a positive campaign, without whining, like his predecessor Michael Ignatieff did, about nasty Conservative attack ads.

He clearly has charisma – he creates a buzz wherever he goes. He meets people with the tactile gusto of Bill Clinton.

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“His talent for face-to-face communication is beyond words and logic, which may be why his opponents, Tutting Tom and Strapped-in Stephen, who can’t manage it quite so effectively, mock him so viciously in public,” observes the Globe and Mail’s Ian Brown, in a beautifully-written profile.

A Trudeau-led Liberal government would also signal the long overdue passing of the torch to a new generation.

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