Canadian Prime minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday began the fight of his political life, under attack for an ethics lapse and other controversies as he opened a campaign for the Oct. 21 general elections.
Polls showed Trudeau, once the youthful golden boy of Canadian politics, in a horse race with Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, who launched his bid for leadership by accusing the Liberal prime minister of lying “to cover up scandals.”
“He has lost the moral authority to govern,” Scheer said before boarding his campaign jet.
Photo: Reuters
Accusations of political meddling in the bribery case against engineering giant SNC-Lavalin Group plunged support for Trudeau at the beginning of the year.
After the prime minister met with Canadian Governor-General Julie Payette to ask her to dissolve parliament and officially start the race, he sidestepped questions about SNC-Lavalin.
Sticking to slogans, Trudeau told reporters there was “a huge amount of work still do” and that it was “always possible to do better.”
This election, he said, was a choice between “the failed [austerity] policies” of his Tory predecessor or “continuing to move forward” with his team.
Elected by a landslide in 2015, Trudeau and his Liberal Party are now battling to hold onto a majority in parliament, with challenges rising up not just from the Conservatives, but also on the left.
No Canadian prime minister with a majority has ever failed to win a second term.
New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party leader Elizabeth May are positioning themselves as spoilers with the aim of denying the Liberals or Conservatives a majority.
Voters are to choose all 338 members of the Canadian House of Commons, with an average of polls showing the Liberals in a dead heat with the Tories.
Scheer was due to make whistle stops in vote-rich Quebec and Ontario, while Trudeau headed to British Columbia to shore up support hemorrhaging over his nationalizing of a pipeline.
Throughout his first term, Trudeau cast himself as a champion in the fight against global warming.
On Wednesday, he promised “a more ambitious climate plan,” while Scheer has vowed to roll back a federal carbon levy as his first act in office, if elected.
The Canadian economy is strong, posting second-quarter growth of 3.7 percent and almost half a million new jobs created in the past year, but the economic gains have not been widely felt, and Canadians have increasingly expressed concern about a rising cost of living.
The Liberals over the past four years legalized cannabis, boosted Canada’s resettlement of refugees, negotiated a new continental free-trade deal with the US and Mexico, and concluded trade pacts with the EU and Pacific nations.
The Trudeau government also oversaw the largest military procurement in Canadian history, to replace aging warships and fighter jets, but Trudeau’s stumble on the ethics front dealt a major blow to his image as a fresh face out to change politics as usual.
The scandal broke when two members of his own Cabinet accused him and his aides of meddling in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin to save jobs.
The Cabinet ministers — both women, one of them Canada’s first indigenous attorney general — were expelled from the party.
The episode cost Trudeau support among women, indigenous people and young people — constituents that helped propel him to victory in 2015.
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