There will be changes under the Conservatives, as the vast majority of Canadians seem to want. Poilievre just needs to calm their anxieties

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In the final weeks of the 2006 federal election, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were between five and 10 points ahead of Paul Martin’s Liberals in the polls.

An increasingly desperate Liberal party launched a series of attack ads targeting Harper’s supposed “hidden agenda,” the most notorious of which suggested that the then Conservative leader’s plan to bolster the number of soldiers available for disaster relief efforts in urban Canada were really earmarked for a more nefarious purpose.

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“Stephen Harper actually announced he wants to increase the military presence in our cities. Canadian cities. Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada. We are not making this up,” the ad said, over the sound of a beating war drum.

The ad was so alarmist it was quickly pulled — and parodied.

“In 1963, In Dallas, Democratic president John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Where was four-year-old Stephen Harper? We don’t know. He’s not saying. We didn’t make this up,” teased the National Post.

It was the perfect example of the political golden rule posited by academic and former Harper campaign manager Tom Flanagan that attack ads are less effective when the target is more trusted........

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