EDITORIAL: Election cakewalk now a knife fight

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If the polls are accurate, Canada’s next federal election has turned from a Conservative cakewalk into a dogfight with the Liberals almost overnight.

The double-digit lead Pierre Poilievre and the Tories held over lame-duck Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals for more than a year appears to have evaporated, putting the Liberals in striking distance of the Conservatives.

One poll has them even with the Conservatives if, as widely expected, they anoint former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney as their leader — and by default Canada’s next PM — on March 9.

Bizarrely, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have saved the Liberals from near-political extinction — which the Liberals were incapable of doing — by his irrational attacks on Canada as an unfair trader which should be annexed by the U.S.

That has unleashed a wave of patriotism across Canada where people have instinctively rallied around the current government, which happens to be Liberal, with an unpopular Liberal PM no longer dragging down Liberal support because he’s not running again.

This puts Poilievre and the Conservatives in a difficult position, because fulfilling their parliamentary role as government critics has led to spurious allegations from the Liberals that doing so betrays Canada.

None of this changes the fundamental issues in the coming election.

First, no political party in a democracy is ever guaranteed an election victory without a fight, which is how it should be.

Second, any political party — in this case the Liberals — that has botched so many major files from immigration, to taxation, to deficits and debt, that its own leadership contenders keep bringing it up, does not deserve re-election.

Third, if the Liberals win a fourth mandate in a row without ever being held to account for the numerous examples of political corruption and ethical violations they have committed over the past decade, there’s no telling what they’ll do next.

The Liberals have failed in every major duty of Canada’s federal government from keeping Canadians safe from violent crime to encouraging per capita economic growth, a key metric of our standard of living, which is declining.

It’s the job of the Conservatives to make this case to the public and then let voters, not pollsters, decide.