OTTAWA, Sept. 9 '' - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau squares off with Canadian opposition Conservative Party chief in a televised debate which could go a long way to decide who wins the sept. 20 election in Canada.
Last year, Erin O'Toole took over his right-leaning party during the height of COVID - 19 Pandemic and insiders admit that he had trouble introducing himself to voters.
Nonetheless, polls indicate that he is ahead of the Liberals amid voter unhappiness over Trudeau's vote to call an election two years early and he will have a chance to consolidate his position in the third of three two hour debates among party leaders.
This is really, really important to both organizations. They screw this up, they lose the election, said Frank Graves, president of Ekos Research Polling Company.
The discussion is the only one in English, the language spoken by two-thirds of Canada's 38 million people. Trudeau says he needs to decide now to decide whether Canadians back his decision to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the pandemic.
This is perhaps the single most important two hours of O'Toole's political life, there are a lot of left-field conservative minds out there so things could shift quickly either way, said a conservative strategist who asked anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
O'Toole, who has been in office for six years, slammed into Trudeau at O'Toole during a French conversation on Wednesday, accusing him of favouring abortion restrictions and wanting to liberalize gun controls.
The debate format - which groups five party leaders on one stage - can sometimes lead to participants talking over one another and the results are not always decisive.
However, Trudeau, who took power in late 2015, benefited from major stumbles by opponents during debate in both 2015 and 2019 campaigns, which he won.