Is Canada less progressive than Justin Trudeau seems to believe? National Post writer John Ivison suggests as much in a just-published book and the Liberals may be about to find out on Oct. 21.

In the opening chapter of “Justin Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister,” Ivison writes, “ … the Liberal government has made a fundamental miscalculation by thinking Canada is a more ‘progressive’ country than is the reality — and that it can govern in perpetuity as long as it dominates the left-of-centre vote.”

He adds, “There is an absolute conviction that Canadians share Trudeau’s devotion, bordering on dogmatism, for an activist agenda to transform Canada into a more egalitarian society by government fiat.”

Ivison cautions that his assertion remains unproven.

But the proposition is, by all indications, soon to be tested.

With the federal vote less than two months away, the Liberals moved on two fronts this week to assert both their progressive credentials and their dominant place among the federal parties that self-describe as such.

They challenged Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to end his boycott of the Pride celebrations, using the latter’s opposition to same-sex marriage 15 years ago to contrast with Trudeau’s vocal support for LBGTQ rights.

On another front, the prime minister himself paid a visit to the pre-election convention of Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union.

More so than any of his predecessors, Trudeau has courted Canada’s union leaders. He has given them unprecedented access to the corridors of federal power.

Early on in his term, he became the first prime minister in 50 years to address a gathering of the Canadian Labour Congress. Such venues used to be the quasi-exclusive purview of NDP leaders.

But while Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland both delivered keynote speeches at the Unifor convention this week, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh did not.

If the past few days are any indication of the shape of Trudeau’s campaign to come, the Liberals are about to double down on their leader’s conviction that his devotion to an activist agenda is shared by a plurality of voters, willing on balance to give their party a pass for any managerial failings on its account. No retreat to the traditional centre is in the works.

It is a gamble that will see the Liberals navigate waters their immediate predecessors found prudent to avoid.

Brian Mulroney was really the last prime minister to present Canadians with a transformative agenda and he left his party in a field of ruins, albeit after two terms in office.

Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper were both suspicious of grand schemes and governed accordingly. The recipe was successful enough for them each remain in power for a decade.

None of Trudeau’s predecessors embraced LGBTQ and abortion rights in the way he does. None described themselves as proactive feminists.

Chrétien and his immediate successor, Paul Martin, would have found doing so to be at odds with the task of leading a middle-of-the-road party.

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But from the current prime minister’s perspective, his constant advocacy on all those fronts is at the very core of what it means to be a Liberal.

And yet, the decriminalization of abortion and, more recently, of medically assisted death and the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples did not stem from the activism of Canada’s governing parties. All were changes imposed by the courts on a reluctant Parliament.

It was not so long ago that such reluctance was rampant in the Liberal ranks. On Chrétien’s watch in 1999, the House of Commons overwhelmingly supported the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Ivison’s book suggests that, notwithstanding their leader’s militancy, that reluctance endures in some of the party’s quarters and, possibly, in segments of the electorate larger than Trudeau assumes.

Based on his research, he also questions whether the prime minister’s “progressive” branding has been burnished at the cost of alienating centre-right voters.

In past elections, that constituency was instrumental in tilting the balance in favour of the Liberals in the Chrétien era and the Conservatives during Harper’s reign.

It is true that past political leaders who made favoured former Ontario premier Bill Davis’s famous contention that “bland works” have tended to be electorally successful.

But it’s also a fact that Trudeau is seeking re-election at a time when the electoral demographics are changing.

In 2015, he brought the Liberals back to power on the shoulders of a coalition that included a critical number of younger voters.

Come October, he will become the first Canadian prime minister to solicit a second term from an electorate dominated by millennials rather than baby-boomers. This is a generation that has grown up with the notions of gender parity, equality in diversity, the right to choose whether to have an abortion or to marry a same-sex partner, and also with the issue of climate change.

In its collective eyes, how likely is it that Trudeau’s so-called progressive mantra will come across as polarizing or, for that matter, particularly bold?

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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