Flickr/Alex Guibord
, CC BY 2.0
When Justin Trudeau took over the ailing Liberal party in 2013, it was a rump that had lost three consecutive elections. Well into the 2015 electoral campaign, it was unclear whether it would even eke out a plurality, locked as it was in a tight race with the incumbent Conservative party and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP). And the Liberals were daring to run on a strongly left-wing platform of Keynesian deficit spending, progressive taxation, disengagement from US-led military operations in the Middle East, and social liberalism – including the legalisation of marijuana.
