listen: this is ridiculous. trying to frame an election around trust is just going to suppress turnout, because....i mean, honestly. politicians. trust. it's absurd. it's a very rare circumstance when voters aren't making a lesser evil calculation. it doesn't matter what kind of voters you're talking about, either; an anti-abortion voter is making the same basic calculation that an environmentalist is: who is going to get me the closest to what i want, with the least damage to what i care about. nobody lines up perfectly behind any kind of platform. there's no trust involved; there's a mental calculation to minimize distrust. it's a house of representatives, it's not a bloody church.

if you can somehow warp me into accepting this narrative and force me to vote based on nothing but trust, i'm going to conclude they're all scheming liars and i'm not going to vote at all. and, the target becomes the benefactor.

i like to say "i wouldn't trust a politician in ottawa to tell me the time of day when we're standing underneath the peace tower". and, it's broadly true. across the spectrum. you want to push this, really? you want to enumerate the lies and psychologically manipulative half-truths told by mulcair and trudeau on the campaign trail, type them up and publish them? do it candidate-by-candidate, riding by riding?

in the end, we'll all be writing in dudley do-right.

voting is a calculated risk. part of the process is working this out - trying to figure out which lies are obviously ridiculous, which lies are attempts to obscure positions, which lies are a big problem in where you stand and which lies don't really matter. but, you don't expect not to be lied to. not unless you're the most ridiculous caricature of the naive canadian ever imagined.

you don't get the opportunity to run for acting and effective head of state in an oecd country unless you've proven yourself an effective liar - or perhaps come from a political dynasty, in which case you've got an uphill battle in figuring the art out.

harper's problem is less that he's a liar. it's more that he's not very good at it, and/or has become flippant and haphazard about it.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/20/message-management-in-the-harper-pmo-replacing-one-lie-with-another/