But trust, as former prime minister Brian Mulroney found, is easy to lose

We Liberals found that out too...

http://www.thestar.com/mobile/NEWS/article/1159270

F-35s, robocalls and the erosion of Harper's credibility
 
In politics, trust corrodes easily. The damage may not be visible at first, but mistrust will slowly and inexorably eat away at a government's credibility.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives might want to keep this in mind as they flounder their way through the F-35 mess.

The central political issue of the government's plan to buy 65 F-35 fighter planes is not the quality of the aircraft themselves. By and large, most citizens don't know — or care to know — the ins and outs of competing fighter jets.

Nor is cost the central political issue. Whether the final cost is $14.7 billion or $25 billion or even more is, in itself, politically irrelevant.

To most of us, any of these sums is a lot of money.

But when voters think governments are lying to them, they do care.

And coming on top of the robocall scandal, the F-35 brouhaha presents a particularly unattractive picture of this government's truthfulness.

To voters, the revelation that misleading robocalls were made during last May's election is a personal affront. Directing people to non-existent polling stations is not an obscure matter of parliamentary privilege. It is a direct assault on our right to choose our leaders.

And when the Harper Conservatives responded first by denying the allegations, then by accusing the opposition of engaging in smear tactics and finally by dismissing any misleading robocalls as isolated events, they did themselves no favours.

It just seemed belligerently shifty.