So this, then, is the beginning of the Conservative Party of Canada election strategy. It will be properly centred around Andrew Scheer but directed by Stephen Harper and feature two Euro-American victims of the supposed violence of a Muslim Canadian teen-aged boy.

This narrative will be "invent-invent-invent," and it will be filled with all the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant hate of the 2015 election campaign.

You know, Canada needs a good Conservative party. Solid and intelligent opposition is how government works here. But this is the party that Stephen Harper has built and directed. It's belligerent. Like the movement of the stereotyped Trump supporter in the U.S., it pours out vindictiveness on its opponents who they believe fail to listen to them. Problem is, for a full decade Canada had a government that nurtured their belligerence.

For two years in opposition the CPC seemed to grow out of that simplistic, power-hungry awkwardness. Now it is just like the summer of 2015 again.