Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to a crowd of Liberal faithful to lead the party into a fourth election as he attacked Pierre Poilievre over his “brokenist” Conservative politics.

Mr. Trudeau kicked off the Liberal national convention in Ottawa on Thursday evening. The party is charting a path to the next federal campaign, which he said is still “a couple of years” away.

“When the election comes, when Canadians need to make a consequential choice in this consequential moment, it will be the honour of my life to lead us through it,” the Prime Minister told his party’s most diehard supporters to cheers and a standing ovation.

Ahead of his speech, the party played a recap of his tenure, from his 2013 leadership election to an appearance on Canada’s Drag Race and his pushback against former U.S. president Donald Trump.

The upbeat video and the Prime Minister’s repeated insistence that the Liberals present a positive message didn’t stop him from attacking Mr. Poilievre, who he said believes investing in Canada is “a waste of money, or that our policies are too woke.”

“Hey, Pierre Poilievre, it’s time for you to wake up,” Mr. Trudeau said, pointing at the camera, and prompting raucous cheers from the crowd.

“We want to build things up, while Pierre Poilievre and his brokenist Conservative Party want to tear things down.”

By staying at the helm, Mr. Trudeau is attempting to do what no Prime Minister has done since Sir Wilfrid Laurier more than a century ago: win four consecutive mandates. Even without that historic challenge, Liberals face an uphill battle, say political watchers who cite the foreign-interference scandal as a key reason why his government is struggling.

The controversy centres on what the government knew about Beijing’s interference attempts in the 2019 and 2021 elections, what it did to stop them, and how it is managing the backlash now. While it has dominated Parliament Hill in recent weeks, it got only a passing mention from Mr. Trudeau. Instead, he told the Liberals in attendance that he wanted to talk about the “positive future” his government is building.

That vision, he said, includes a price on carbon, fighting climate change, boosting immigration and creating an electric vehicle supply chain. On building affordable housing and improving the country’s health care systems, Mr. Trudeau said his government still needs to do more and be “clear-eyed” about the challenges confronting Canadians.

”Pierre Poilievre’s populism, his slogans and buzzwords, are not serious solutions to the serious challenges we’re facing,” he said.

Nanos Research polling shows that the party has been consistently trailing the Official Opposition Conservatives since February.

The minority government has not enjoyed any boost from significant political events such as the visit of President Joe Biden and the release of the 2023 budget, said pollster Nik Nanos. The question is whether the Liberals can use their convention to change the trendline.

Nanos polling over the course of April shows the Liberals at 30 per cent compared with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives at 35 per cent. The NDP are at 20 per cent and the Bloc Québécois are at six per cent. The four-week poll is based on 1,159 respondents and has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

On top of that, Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Trudeau are statistically tied on the question of preferred prime minister, at 28 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively. Mr. Nanos said the incumbent usually has a baked-in five-point advantage because Canadians already see them in the job.

Against that context and already in a third mandate, Mr. Nanos said that Mr. Trudeau winning a fourth consecutive election would be “exceptional.”

“It’s quite difficult,” he said. “If Shakespeare was writing this play, he’d say the son is trying to outdo his father as the most successful Liberal leader in the modern era.”

The questions around the government’s response to foreign interference is setting the agenda, to the government’s detriment, said Lori Turnbull, director of the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University.

“I would say that this is the most critical and uncertain time for the Liberal government since it was elected,” she said. “Unforced errors have made this one of the worst times for the government since 2015, and perhaps the very worst because the government is almost eight years old and on its third mandate, and so voter fatigue is palpable.”

She said it’s difficult for the government to get out from under the foreign-interference controversies because while there is “no proven wrongdoing on the part of the government” it is difficult to prove the absence of it.

The challenge is made worse because the people that Mr. Trudeau has entrusted to provide oversight and advice are also connected to him or the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Prof. Turnbull said the Prime Minister needs to use the convention to energize Liberals and persuade them that he is the only one who can beat Pierre Poilievre.

“Ultimately, he needs to shift momentum so that the party feels that a win is possible,” she said. “The party needs a shot in the arm.”

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