Top five things Trudeau need to do to regain Liberal momentum and win on Oct. 19

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This article was published 02/08/2015 (3749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau’s ascension to the Liberal leadership in April 2013 immediately revived the once-mighty party that had been left for dead after the 2011 election. Fuelled by Trudeau’s celebrity, family pedigree and sunny ways, the third party vaulted into the lead in opinion polls and stayed there for almost two years.

But as he heads into his first election campaign as leader, Trudeau’s star has dimmed, tarnished by a series of verbal gaffes and relentless Conservative attack ads that he’s “in over his head” and “just not ready” to govern.

Here are five things Liberal strategists believe Trudeau and his party need to do to regain momentum and win on Oct. 19.

1. Perform well in the leaders’ debates. That doesn’t mean Trudeau must score the proverbial knock-out punch or even best his rivals on points. But he does need to exceed expectations — which, thanks to the Tory attack ads, are low — and demonstrate that he’s a credible alternative to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In short, he needs to perform well enough to dispel the qualms the Tory ads have stoked.

2. Draw attention back to the substance of his economic policies. They were overshadowed immediately after they were unveiled in May by the stunning NDP upset in Alberta and the subsequent surge in NDP support federally.

Trudeau wants to replace the Conservative child benefit regime with a single, more generous, tax-free child benefit that Liberals say will give more to all parents with household incomes of less than $150,000, while giving less to wealthier households. He’s also promising to hike taxes on the wealthiest one per cent of Canadians and give an across-the-board tax cut to middle-income earners.

3. Contrast Trudeau’s policies with those of the NDP. Liberals need to make the case that Trudeau offers real, progressive change that will actually help those who need it most, as opposed to Mulcair, whom Liberals charge would perpetuate the Tory penchant for giving benefits equally to wealthy families who don’t need it.

That means emphasizing that Mulcair is opposed to hiking taxes on the wealthy, and would maintain the Conservative universal child care benefit and create one million, $15-a-day child care spaces that would be available to parents regardless of income.

4. Bring greater scrutiny to bear on Mulcair and the NDP. So far, Liberals grouse that the NDP has had pretty much a free ride as the Conservatives — intent on winning important swing ridings, particularly in and around Toronto, which are largely two-way Liberal-Conservative contests — concentrate all their firepower on Trudeau.

The Liberals can’t afford to spend the kind of money Conservatives are investing in attack ads. So they’ll have to find other means of drawing attention to what they maintain are Mulcair’s dangerous policies — allowing a bare majority referendum vote to trigger negotiations on Quebec secession, for instance — and unrealistic promises, such as abolishing the Senate.

5. Get out the vote. For all the attention paid to the “air war” — national leaders’ tours, debates, ads — Liberal strategists are convinced the party with the best campaign on the ground in each of the country’s 338 ridings will win. Liberals have not paid as much attention as they should have to the ground war during the last two elections and are determined not to make that mistake again. They’ve spent considerable time, energy and resources to train local campaign teams and modernize their ground game.