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With less than a year to go before voting day, themes are already emerging for the coming campaign. We’re told to expect either a dirty campaign or a decent one, which will be all about carbon tax grabs or saving the planet or perhaps more traditionally, about who can best steer Canada in these dangerous times.

Last week, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer predicted trouble on the electoral horizon. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals “are going to throw everything they have at us. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get nasty,” he warned.

Who doesn’t love a campaign that starts with such unseemly victimization? With our senses bombarded by the political warfare in the U.S., Scheer is promising much the same for Canada. But we shouldn’t blame the Conservatives.

Trudeau sounded a similar warning at a fundraiser in Toronto.

“We are now looking at perhaps what will be the most divisive and negative and nasty political campaign in Canada’s history,” Trudeau speculated.

“I can tell you, we will do the same thing we did in 2015: No personal attacks, strong differentiation on issues of policy. I will not engage in personal attacks and none of our team will either.”

So if nastiness does happen, it won’t be the Liberals’ fault either. Maybe hateful political language just materializes out of thin air. But when it does start, and it will, people will decide for themselves who’s to blame. As for the NDP, they haven’t promised to run a clean campaign, although they usually do.

Voters also will have to decide whom and what to believe on actual policies, given the vastly different fact sets being used by the parties.

To vote for the Liberals, you have to believe they’re putting a fair price on carbon emissions that will benefit the economy and the environment. That’s a tall order, but it is at the heart of the Liberal platform.

Simultaneously, you’ll also have to believe the Liberals will solve the glut of Western Canadian oil, which is exacting a heavy price in the western provinces. Yet the Liberals failed to win approval for either a crude pipeline to the East Coast or one from Alberta to the Pacific.

You have to believe the Liberals will keep a lid on their deficit spending, which is creeping up. It probably won’t hurt if you agree that legalizing marijuana was a good idea. Oh yeah, and that the Liberals will be able to handle the madness of Donald Trump and the poison spreading from global populism.

To support the Conservatives, you’ll have to believe that they eventually will promise something — anything — on greenhouse gases and climate change. At a minimum, Scheer could admit it’s a real phenomenon, proven by science. Right now, the Conservatives can’t seem to decide if it’s real or a hoax.

You will have to believe that a Scheer Conservative government will overcome all the objections of the B.C. government and the First Nations and get a pipeline built to tidewater. Readers will recall that Stephen Harper didn’t get that done despite almost 10 years in office.

Scheer also claims he could have achieved a better trade deal with the Trump administration than the Trudeau government did. He can’t substantiate that and no one I know believes him.

And what to believe about Conservative plans for cannabis? Legalization is not popular among party members and for a few days, Scheer dangled the notion that a Conservative government might re-criminalize it. Now he says that won’t happen. Who knows?

A year out, polls can’t predict the eventual results. But the current national polls suggest the Liberals are narrowly ahead. The Conservatives have had some good polls, too, but haven’t established momentum so far.

It’s really Trudeau’s election to lose. He faces two underwhelming opposition leaders in Scheer and Jagmeet Singh. In that sense, it’s advantage Liberals. Everything else is in play.