Daily Times

In the absence of an overriding narrative, dirty tactics and awkward moments characterized Canada’s official campaign, making it a bumpy ride into Monday’s federal election.

The fortunes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s media bus illustrate how things for the six competing parties have gone. On Sept. 11, the first day of the campaign, the bus collided with the wing of the Trudeau-branded airplane, putting it out of commission for weeks.

A couple of weeks later, the bus got stuck turning in to a British Columbia parking lot for a rally. Police blocked the road and journalists were asked to get out and push. It happened again in Montreal on Thursday.

“The pitfalls and mishaps have had more prominence because there has been no over-arching story,” said Paul Adams, a journalism professor at Carleton University.

Four years ago, Liberal leader Trudeau won a majority in parliament after embracing “change” as his campaign narrative after almost a decade of Conservative Party rule.

After a six-week campaign, Canadians vote on Oct. 21 with polls showing a dead heat between the two frontrunners, Trudeau and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

The most explosive moment of the race was when Time magazine published a picture of Trudeau, who has been a champion of Canadian multiculturalism, in blackface in 2001. The next day, a blackface video of Trudeau from the early 1990s surfaced after it was leaked by the Conservatives to a broadcaster.

No angels themselves, Liberal officials had spent two years collecting video clips, documents and social media posts they could use against the Conservatives, two Liberal officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record due to the sensitivity of the information, said recently. Trudeau this week called the campaign one of the “dirtiest, nastiest” in the country’s history.

Trees And Bacon

Scheer had his own squirm-worthy moment when it was revealed he held American and well as Canadian citizenship. A few weeks later, former US President Barack Obama turned his back on his fellow countryman and endorsed Trudeau.

At an October leaders’ debate, one man showed up dressed as Captain America holding a sign that read: “Make Andrew Canadian Again”.

Scheer also was found to have exaggerated his work as an insurance broker, which political satirist Rick Mercer quipped “is something you’d never put on your dating profile.” It turns out Scheer never held a license.

Trudeau, who loves to canoe, paddled around a lake in Ontario before promising to help lower-income families take a camping holiday. Previously, he promised to use revenue from an oil pipeline to plant 2 billion trees over the next decade.