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The intricate minuet of Canadian politics has halted in front of a question few could have predicted even six months ago.

Has the former heir-apparent to Stephen Harper’s mantle of power, Justin Trudeau, suddenly and with stunning surprise fallen out of the run for the roses?

According to Frank Graves of EKOS, the pollster who has burned up these pages recently with his surveys around this subject, there seems a massive appetite for change in the country, or at least a loss of appetite for Harper. Only 33 per cent of Canadians approve of how the current PM is running the show.

As Bill Clinton once said of Republicans, the Conservatives have a problem. It’s called arithmetic.

What’s changed is that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is now the darling of progressives — and a growing number of Canadians. Mulcair has the highest approval (67 per cent) and the lowest disapproval rate (33 per cent) of any national leader.

In his latest poll, Graves placed the NDP and the Conservatives in a tie with 125 seats apiece, and the Liberals at 83 seats, based on a 338 Parliament. If that model were to hold, the Trudeau Liberals would see a pick-up of 47 seats, the Mulcair NDP would add 30 seats, and the Harper Conservatives would lose 34 seats. Canada would have a minority government led by either Harper or Mulcair. Trudeau would be reduced to the most disappointed of political players — the kingmaker who wanted to be king.

Part of the story is that Trudeau’s numbers in this poll are only bad in relation to the unreasonable expectations the party has placed on him. By almost any political metric, more than doubling your seats in one election would be a wild success for any party leader.

But not if your name happens to be Trudeau. As Senator Willie Moore told me (a Liberal before Trudeau jettisoned his senators from the caucus), a lot of party people expect a majority government from Justin. At the very least, success would require a minority win. In a party so used to winning, and with raw memories of being repeatedly thrashed in the Harper era fresh in their minds, there is no cigar for finishing third.

Harper set a trap for Trudeau that the prodigal Liberal couldn’t avoid: oppose C-51 and you give the Conservatives the reason they needed to call a spring election; go along with it and doom your party to siding with the CPC on a loser issue. Harper set a trap for Trudeau that the prodigal Liberal couldn’t avoid: oppose C-51 and you give the Conservatives the reason they needed to call a spring election; go along with it and doom your party to siding with the CPC on a loser issue.

Despite the high and most-would-agree unreasonable expectations for Trudeau, there is real reason for Liberals to be alarmed at his startling descent in popularity — particularly in the key battleground province of Quebec.

According to Graves, all Trudeau can see of Mulcair are his vapour trails. The NDP now stands at 38 per cent in Quebec compared to just 18 per cent for Trudeau. That leaves the Liberals in a three-way tie for second place in Quebec — and Mulcair well ahead and in the driver’s seat.

A few months back, I asked Trudeau’s confidante and advisor Gerald Butts about another EKOS poll that showed the Conservatives were polling then at a surprising 24 per cent in Quebec. Butts disputed the actual number, but explained that the Liberals did have an emerging problem there.

For Trudeau to be successful in the next election, Butts said, the Liberals would have to drive down the NDP number in Quebec to the level of the party’s national number — roughly 20 per cent. Instead, according to EKOS, that number has nearly doubled. Without Quebec, there is no way for the Liberals to form a government. Period.

Why the dramatic rise in NDP support? For one thing, Canadians seem to be getting tired of fear politics all the time. Support for the master of scare-politics, Stephen Harper, is at historic lows. The CPC’s support appears to be “baked in” at just under 30 per cent, with very little prospect for growth. Harper is still the first choice of a significant bloc of voters — but he is the second choice of almost no one.

As Graves discovered, the NDP is the only national party with at least 20 per cent support in every province, and Mulcair is at the top of the leaders’ index. The guy with the beard is the guy with the mojo.

A big part of the Come-to-Tom phenomenon is the result of the recent Alberta election. Ostensibly the most conservative province in Canada — though not really — Alberta just handed the reins of power to the NDP. It was like the Red Sea parting and the Israelites escaping from Egypt. If Albertans could end their bondage to a traditional party that racked up 13 straight majority governments, why not the rest of Canada?

While the stars were aligning for Mulcair, Trudeau was struggling with the fact that more people disapproved than approved of him by a narrow margin — 47 to 46 per cent, within the margin of error. It would seem a big part of that was the strategic decision to support Bill C-51.

Harper set a trap for Trudeau that the prodigal Liberal couldn’t avoid: Oppose C-51 and give the Conservatives the reason they needed to call a spring election, or go along with it and doom your party to siding with the CPC on a loser issue for anyone not a card-carrying Conservative.

Although up to 80 per cent of the Liberal caucus oppose this police-state legislation, the Liberal braintrust opted to support it — though couched it by saying they plan “amendments.” Their thinking was twofold. First, they didn’t want to hand the Conservatives the argument that Trudeau was soft on terrorism. Second, they wanted to concentrate on their “fair tax” proposal which their polling showed resonated with Canadians.

It was, like a lot of things in politics, a judgment call. As things turned out, at least so far, it looks like another example of bad judgment.

Support for C-51 has plummeted as Canadians learn more about it, particularly in Quebec. The Liberals have stuck by their support of the legislation, not wanting to make the leader look like a flip-flopper. Advantage Thomas Mulcair, who has publicly and vociferously attacked the legislation, along with Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Ironically, it is the PM and his party who may end up paying the price for the unexpected developments on the progressive side of Canadian politics. The Conservatives always knew they needed to keep the left side parties in a near dead heat to exploit the same weird splits that gave them a majority last time. They have pounded Trudeau to the point they might have damaged him irreparably and in so doing, handed the would-be splits to the NDP.

Blue versus Red is one thing; Orange versus Blue could be the Plains of Abraham all over again.

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Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

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