CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
That's not my recollection of the events. I think "showed us who he really was" is just the FUD spread by the Liberals. I have left leaning friends and their opinions of PP are totally disconnected from the reality of what he says and does, they are just repeating the talking points they get from their circle.
Nobody wants to debate actual policy and basically we ended up with a different conservative, Carney, whose actual policies are in my opinion iffy ans his performance the same. Scare tactics are easier than policy debate.
But he polled better than Trudeau: https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.