At this time last year, Finance Minister Bill Morneau was in the eye of a storm over the bungled rollout of a series of small business tax changes, and Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives looked like they were on a roll.

The minister has been having a quieter parliamentary season this fall. With the legalization of cannabis, the NAFTA renegotiation and the energy/environment debates taking up centre stage, Morneau was largely consigned to a cameo role in the House of Commons.

That will change on Wednesday when he delivers the last fall fiscal update before next year’s federal election.

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The return of the economy to the Commons forefront offers the Conservative opposition one of its last best chances to find a solid footing to take on Justin Trudeau next fall.

With less than a year to go until the campaign, Scheer remains a leader in search of a compelling (and unifying) narrative.

He and his party have just spent much of the past year prosecuting the Liberals on their handling of the refugee issue and their plan to tax carbon pollution. But if they were road-testing those themes for the actual campaign, the results are not promising.

A poll published on the weekend by the Environics Institute suggests the Conservatives’ message track is more of a rut than a path to victory.

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The political capital expended on attacking Trudeau’s management of an influx of irregular refugees crossing from the U.S. into Canada has barely moved the public opinion needle.

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The proportion of voters that identifies immigration and refugees as a top-of-mind problem is stagnant. Only five per cent list the file as an important one. That’s up just one point from the year before.

Even in Quebec, the province that is at ground zero of the influx, the issue continues to lack the kind of traction that would make it a strong ballot box issue next fall.

Inspired by the success of Doug Ford’s Tories in last June’s Ontario election, Scheer has jumped in front of a provincial parade of Conservative premiers and leaders committed to opposing Trudeau’s carbon-pricing policy.

He has promised a CPC government would dismantle the Liberal climate change framework and speed up the approval of new pipelines.

But the Environics numbers suggest the Conservatives are missing the mark with their anti-carbon tax, pro-pipeline crusade, and may be caught in a time warp. Over a year that has seen Scheer and his provincial allies hammer away at Trudeau’s carbon-pricing policy, the proportion of voters that lists climate change and the environment as a top of mind concern has doubled, from five per cent to 10 per cent.

In the Environics list of important challenges, climate change is now in the same league as health care and ranks just below the economy. The environment has not been a Conservative strong suit in decades. Should the issue drive more votes than in past elections next fall, it will not be good news for Scheer. Given his party’s rhetoric, it would take more than a coat of green paint to turn this Conservative leader into a credible climate change fighter in time for the federal vote.

It is easy to connect the dots between those findings and the latest polls on voting intentions. They add up to a net Liberal advantage.

Scheer is doing really well in regions like the Prairies, where the Conservatives usually do well and he is doing poorly in places like British Columbia and Quebec and Atlantic Canada where he absolutely needs to make gains if he is going to lead his party back to government.

Unlike Stephen Harper, he cannot count on the NDP to divide the non-conservative vote to his advantage — unless the New Democrats undergo an unlikely revival between now and the fall.

In light of the weakness of the NDP offering, Scheer’s alignment with a polarizing Ontario premier risks driving more votes to the Liberals next fall than attracting more support for the federal Conservatives.

And then there is the economy.

At this time last year, the federal finance minister was widely seen as a weak link in a critical spot in the Liberal chain of command.

Back then, the Trudeau/Morneau economic tandem seemed to offer a soft and juicy target for the Conservatives.

But in the wake of the soft landing of the tentative NAFTA deal the Liberals negotiated with the U.S. and Mexico, and with corporate Canada — for the most part — behind Trudeau’s carbon tax, it is Scheer’s already slim economic credentials that are in need of shoring up this fall.

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