It says here that Andrew Scheer should try to look natural

Surrey, B.C., is more than 4,000 km from Ottawa. But the city apparently brings back memories for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who “grew up in a very middle-class home in an end-unit townhouse”—or so he said on Sunday, reading from a television-turned-teleprompter in the living room of a couple with the conveniently middle-class names Reed and Gretchen. Critics rightly laughed at Scheer’s feigned empathy (can the man not improvise a little when chatting up his own childhood?). But the whole fiasco spells out a deeper trend: the middle class has become a serious flashpoint during this election cycle, while climate change, pipelines, murdered Indigenous women, foreign policy toward China and white supremacists quickly fall wayside to which party leader can shave a hundred bucks off a household’s annual taxes. Reed and Gretchen might think Scheer’s the right guy; others will see through him as easily as we can see his script. 

Check Macleans.ca every weekday of the election, as writer Michael Fraiman dissects an image that tells a different story from the campaign.

MORE ELECTION IMAGES OF THE DAY:

• Shaking hands with the invisible Prime Minister
• Trouble on Air Trudeau, where the media is a real menace
• Average dad with car salesman’s grin drops kids off at school