Attempts to tap into issues behind populist mood will be front and centre in this election campaign

By personalizing his attacks on Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer has tried to incite the anger that is the lifeblood of populism. It thrives on resentment and a feeling of being betrayed and usurped by elite political leaders, immigrants, cosmopolitans, or others.

Let's do this: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer. Mr. Scheer, as a career politician who has enjoyed some of the most luxurious taxpayer-funded perks on the federal scene and now makes $200,000-plus a year, is not the most obvious figure to argue that the Liberal elites don’t care about the economic problems of the Canadian rank and file. But Mr. Scheer has worked hard to try to sketch a meaningful contrast between his middle-class upbringing and that of Mr. Trudeau, the rich son of a former prime minister, writes Les Whittington.The Hill Times photographs by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY LES WHITTINGTON

September 16, 2019

OTTAWA—By Oct. 21, Canadians will have a better idea how the populist wave that has swept through Western democracies in recent years will play out in Canada. The Conservatives are running an essentially populist campaign against the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau. In keeping with the pattern seen in...

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