The task seemed simple on paper when Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, called parliamentary elections in Canada last August for Monday, September 20.

The leader of the Liberal Party hoped that general approval for his handling of the health crisis would result in votes, a stable majority and a new five-year term when the pandemic ends. 

Yet the ballot now promises to be surprisingly tight, with Canadian political observers believing that Justin Trudeau made several miscalculations.

The latter would have, among other things, badly anticipated the lack of appetite of voters - in particular liberals - for a poll in the middle of a fourth wave of Covid-19, or the stubborn hatred he inspires in the Canadian right.

The military experience facing a "privileged" Justin Trudeau 

This is where Erin O'Toole comes in. Since taking over as head of the Conservative Party in August 2020, the portly man, 48 years old and father of two, has reportedly lost fifteen kilograms while going for a run every day. But he has also shed many of the traditional conservative positions, successively abandoning his commitments against the carbon tax and the ban on assault weapons, to embark on the race for the post of Justin Trudeau. 

Born in Montreal in 1973, Erin O'Toole moved, as a child, to Bowmanville, Ontario (east of Toronto) after her father got a job as a manager at the General plant. Motors located nearby. At the age of 9, he and his two young sisters lost their mother to breast cancer. According to him, the latter instilled in him a sense of service: his mother had sponsored a family of Vietnamese refugees, thousands of whom had been welcomed in Canada in the 1970s. 

Erin O'Toole lacks the spectacular political pedigree of his liberal rival: Justin Trudeau was born in 1971 to a sitting Prime Minister, the charismatic and iconoclastic Liberal Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and grew up in the limelight. But O'Toole Sr. also introduced his son to the hustle and bustle of election campaigns, holding local office before securing five terms as Conservative in the Ontario provincial legislature.

At 18, Erin O'Toole enrolled in military college and became an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force four years later, serving as a tactical navigator and then as a captain in military search and rescue helicopters. He relied on his service in the armed forces to get his party's message out about the character of Justin Trudeau. 

"When Justin Trudeau was partying - and we've all seen the photos - I was on military search and rescue missions," the Conservative candidate said at the start of the last week of the campaign. "Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their life - a privileged one who always strives to be number one," he continued. "He is ready to say anything to get elected, no matter what damage it does to our country." 

If elected, Erin O'Toole would, in more than 50 years in Canada, be the first person to become Prime Minister with military experience, according to the Canadian daily newspaper The Globe and Mail.

The Conservative candidate served in the peacetime military until 2000, then moved on to a reservist to study law in Halifax.

He then worked as a business lawyer in Toronto - notably for the multinational Procter & Gamble - and founded "True Patriot Love", a charity for veterans.

Inspired by Presidents Johnson and Trump, but pro-abortion 

In 2012, Erin O'Toole entered the House of Commons after winning a by-election in the constituency of Durham.

He was then re-elected twice as a deputy (in 2015 and in 2019).

Added to this was a brief stint as Minister of Veterans Affairs, in 2015, a function of spokesperson for the Conservative Party on Foreign Affairs for three years, as well as two failures to take the head of his party - before win last year. 

In her attempt to modernize her party and bring the Conservatives back to power in Ottawa, Erin O'Toole drew inspiration from the strategies that made her Conservative contemporaries successful in the UK and the US.

He has clearly expressed his pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQI views, echoing a David Cameron-style compassionate conservatism. 

Conservative Party Leader Erin O'Toole speaks to supporters during an election campaign visit to North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, September 3, 2021. © Jennifer Gauthier, Reuters

The Canadian Conservative leader has also tried to win the votes of the working class, by exploiting disillusioned liberals, like Boris Johnson, who knew how to wrest support from old strongholds of the Labor Party.

And Erin O'Toole launched into slogans very similar to those of Donald Trump - "Canada first", "Let's take Canada back". 

He also took a stand against what the conservatives call the "cancel culture": he made fun of the "woke" campaigns, which wanted to rename public buildings bearing the names of the founders of the famous system. of residential schools that brutally oppressed generations of native Canadians, before going back on his remarks in the face of accusations of racism.

>> To read: Canada in shock after the discovery of 751 graves near a residential school for indigenous people

The Conservative base does not always agree with Erin O'Toole. At a party convention last March, the party backed a resolution to add "climate change is real" to the book of conservative policies. Delegates rejected it. When a Liberal bill to ban LGBTQ conversion therapy was tabled in the House of Commons in June, Erin O'Toole backed it - but the Conservative deputy leader voted against it. 

For this campaign in times of pandemic, he wanted to spare the opinions within the party. While Justin Trudeau demanded that liberal candidates get vaccinated before campaigning, Erin O'Toole, who tested positive for Covid-19 last year and vaccinated since, refused to demand that his own candidates be vaccinated, saying prefer rapid tests and that health decisions are a matter of personal choice.

"He can't even convince his own candidates to get vaccinated," Justin Trudeau said in a televised debate in September.

"Erin O'Toole can't even convince her party that climate change is real."

"I'm the one driving the bus," retorted the conservative candidate.

During this debate, Erin O'Toole did not sound like the stifling, humorless Tory leader of yore.

Its promise to roll out more than $ 50 billion in new spending over five years is also far removed from conservative doctrine.

"We are no longer your father's conservative party," he said on Wednesday during an electoral trip.

A referendum for or against Justin Trudeau? 

In the home stretch, pollsters say Justin Trudeau and Erin O'Toole are statistically tied before Monday's vote. Since Canada is a parliamentary democracy, there are practical limits to popular vote polling. The election is not a one-horse race - there are 338 races, one in each district - and the names of the Liberal and Conservative candidates appear only on the ballots respectively for their own constituencies of Montreal and the Greater Toronto Area. . In 2019, Conservative candidate Andrew Scheer won the popular vote, but still missed 36 seats against Justin Trudeau's Liberals. But this time around, according to pollsters, the situation is different. 

When Justin Trudeau announced the elections would be held in August, "most political observers could not believe it," said Darrell Bricker, managing director of Ipsos Global Affairs, contacted by France 24. Ipsos polls showed that 56 % of voters did not want an election, liberal voters being the least favorable.

"I don't know how he could have missed that ... The only people who wanted an election were the voters of the opposition, in particular the Tories", continues Darrell Bricker, who adds that these snap elections gave the population the impression of a political calculation.

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While the election call itself made the election a referendum on Justin Trudeau, the Conservatives were happy to comply.

And the social conservatives among them have agreed to turn a blind eye to certain subjects in order to oust their sworn enemy. 

"Erin O'Toole only gets ahead because people are angry with Justin Trudeau. So he's essentially presenting himself as the alternative choice," says Darrell Bricker.

"He didn't offend anyone. He became an acceptable option, as opposed to ... building momentum, like Justin Trudeau did in 2015." 

The pollster explains that in Canadian politics lately, "for the left, it's like" American Idol "(television program equivalent to" La Nouvelle Star "in France, Editor's note). For the right, it's like a job interview… If you look like you can do the job, that's fine. " The result is that, for now at least, Erin O'Toole's ambiguity about politics doesn't matter. "The Conservative vote is focused on one thing right now and that is the departure of Justin Trudeau," said Darrell Bricker. 

The mood on the campaign trail was much different in 2015 for Justin Trudeau, pictured here clowning with members of the campaign team in Montreal on election day, October 19, 2015. © Andy Blatchford / The Canadian Press via AP / File

Nik Nanos, founder of Nanos Research contacted by France 24, said, meanwhile, that the conservatives have changed their strategy to present the ballot as a question of character.

"Erin O'Toole's consistent performance and his more progressive and spendthrift agenda compared to previous Conservative campaigns have helped to immunize him and the Tories against Liberal scare-mongering."

Difficulties ahead for the liberal and conservative camp in case of victory 

The wait is now tense. After polling stations close in Canada's six time zones on Monday, counting an unusually high number of postal ballots - amid the pandemic - could delay the results of close election duels.

But if the Conservatives win, that will not be the end of the battle for Erin O'Toole.

"His problem is that his party does not necessarily agree with him," notes Darrell Bricker.

This makes the task of running a minority government particularly difficult.

The euphoria of the Conservatives to have ousted Justin Trudeau would be short-lived, with a pandemic to manage.

And Darrell Bricker joking about Erin O'Toole: "It's the old analogy of the dog that grabbed the car: 'I have it. What am I going to do with it?'"

This article, adapted in French by Jean-Luc Mounier, is taken from the English version written by Tracy McNicoll.

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