This is a national Postmedia Network editorial.

Canadians need a competent, stable government in a time of global uncertainty, a government focused on sound management of our domestic and foreign affairs. That’s why we encourage voters to elect a majority Conservative government on Monday, Oct. 21.

Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are the only choice for those who understand that Canada today requires responsible, pragmatic leadership, and who oppose the free-spending ways of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

The Conservative platform is a reasonable and practical document to help Canadians struggling to make ends meet while keeping public spending affordable. The Conservatives have also vowed to end the Liberals’ divisive approach to national affairs, which has revived the long-dormant discord between east and west. And they are committed to returning much-needed probity to a country whose foreign forays have too often had embarrassing results.

Their fiscal plan is particularly welcome, since it foreshadows a pro-free market, smaller-tax environment. The Conservatives have vowed to eradicate the deficit while reducing taxes over the next five years. The measures they envisage, including a universal tax cut, selling federal real estate and scaling back on travel and hospitality, are reassuringly common-sensical ways to ensure that Canada lives within its means.

Then there is Scheer himself. In contrast to Trudeau, he is a man for whom what you see is what you get. He and his party are promising a return to quiet competence and a focus on management of a complex country.

No leader is perfect, and no platform beyond criticism. But after the missteps of the last four years, polls suggest Canadians are unconvinced that Trudeau’s Liberals have earned re-election. Those reservations are well founded. The Liberals and Trudeau presented themselves as one thing, and have been shown to be something entirely different.

Trudeau has a weakness for sweeping declarations that overlook the difficulty of the details. His grand promises for reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians and electoral reform were both scuttled for expediency, as were his claims of fiscal responsibility. “We will balance that budget in 2019,” he promised four years ago. He didn’t. This time around the Liberals are instead promising to add another $90 billion — at least — in debt.

Trudeau himself has twice been found guilty of violating ethics laws, most disturbingly in the circumstances surrounding the SNC-Lavalin affair. Trudeau continues to insist he’s done nothing wrong, despite the federal ethics commissioner ruling that Trudeau had directly and through his senior officials tried to influence Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould in an effort to manipulate an independent criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for corruption.

Wilson-Raybould’s subsequent banishment from cabinet and later the Liberal party after refusing to do so put an end to one of Trudeau’s proudest early boasts about inclusiveness and feminism.

That is far from the only occasion upon which Trudeau’s character has been found wanting. While trying to smear his opponents as intolerant, Trudeau was discovered to have appeared in racist blackface photos on several occasions. He has attacked Conservatives for being unserious about climate change, while his own government has fallen short of its own carbon-reduction goals.

In 2015, Canadians took a chance on Trudeau and his promise of “sunny ways.” The last four years have left millions disappointed and disillusioned. This time, Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives are the right choice for Canada.

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