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It’s a great voice for apologies, so it gets lots of exercise

Classic example, easily found on YouTube and in other archives, from the early days of the SNC-Lavalin affair: “The allegations in the Globe story this morning ( … pause for emphasis … ) are false.” And that takes care of that. When the PM hits “are false,” the pressure put on those two words is the signal that people can accept that the story is all tosh, and everyone should go home and watch Big Brother.

The third voice doesn’t come out as often as those two, but it’s plainly meant to be the knockout voice. It’s declamatory, strong, even loud, and has the neat, even unique characteristic of telling Canadians that what he’s saying this time is true because he’s saying it. Who can forget the almost-Churchillian vigour of his famous promise, from the 2015 campaign, to “balance the budget by 2019.”

“I am looking straight at Canadians and being honest the way I always have. We said we are committed to balanced budgets and we are! We will balance that budget in 2019.” You can almost hear the echoes … We shall fight on the beaches … etc.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Looking at the clip nearly four years later you can’t help but be impressed by its sheer (Scheer?) ardour, the steely determination of the voice, the clarity and certitude behind the promise. It has that same stern infallibility you hear in Newfoundland when someone says “I ’spose it’s going to rain on the weekend again.” Pure accent of truth or truth itself.

On my believability meter, I’d put “I ’spose it’s going to rain on the weekend again (in Newfoundland) and the dramatic assurance of “We’ll balance the budget in 2019” from Mr. Trudeau, as right up there with Papal declarations, and the familiar operations of diarrhetic bears in the woods. One hundred per cent in both cases.