By Leah Schnurr
OTTAWA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Canada's new prime minister,
Justin Trudeau, is moving back to the house where he grew up.
The Liberal leader, son of former prime minister Pierre
Trudeau, led his party to victory in a federal election on
Monday, defeating Stephen Harper's Conservatives by a wide
margin. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12J16L
While the final vote count was not yet complete, Trudeau's
Liberals were on track to win 174 of Parliament's 338 seats,
according to Elections Canada.
That means Trudeau is on track to break the record for the
biggest gain in seats in an election, which was previously held
by the Conservatives, who added 111 seats in the 1984 election.
It is the largest percentage increase in seats ever gained by a
party in an election.
The stunning win returns Trudeau, 43, to the prime
minister's official residence at 24 Sussex Drive where he lived
for almost 12 years while his father was in office.
Trudeau, who took over a party in shambles in 2013, trailed
early in the campaign, brushed off by his opponents as being
more style than substance and an intellectual lightweight who
was not ready for the job.
But a bold pledge to run a budget deficit and boost spending
to spur the economy, as well as a positive message and his
gregarious nature, helped the Liberals engineer a turnaround.
The telegenic Trudeau has often drawn large crowds and
elicited comparisons to the Kennedy dynasty and the Obama
campaigns. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12F1W2
He was born to great publicity on Christmas Day 1971 and
stayed in the limelight until his father left office in 1984. He
returned to prominence with a moving eulogy at his father's 2000
funeral.
"Dealing with being my father's son isn't something that I
suddenly had to get my mind around as I showed up in this place
as an MP (member of Parliament) ... it's been something that's
been with me all my life," he told Reuters in a January
interview. "It's what I put out there that actually matters."
A former teacher and snowboard instructor, Trudeau was first
elected as an MP in 2008. He won again in 2011, but the Liberal
party suffered its worst election showing ever. After the party
leader resigned, Trudeau's name began to be floated around as
the next chief.
Trudeau, who has three children, initially said he was
undecided due to his young family but eventually reconsidered
and won the leadership election by a wide margin.
Support for the Liberals surged after his win but that
goodwill had evaporated by the time the election got underway in
August.
The tone was set by an early Conservative attack ad that
claimed Trudeau wasn't ready to be the country's next prime
minister and took aim at his looks with the comment, "Nice hair,
though."
"What Trudeau did was surprise the field, and he stiffened
the spine of a lot of liberals who were wavering," said Nelson
Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto.
Trudeau also touted a path for Canada that he said was more
ambitious than his opponents'. His slogan "Real Change" echoes
Barack Obama's successful "Hope and Change," and Trudeau admires
how, in his view, Obama transformed grassroots democracy.
Trudeau's short political career has not been without its
gaffes.
Critics say Trudeau's comments and headline-grabbing events,
such as challenging a Conservative senator to a televised boxing
match and winning in 2012, lack gravitas. After Canada joined
the coalition against Islamic State, he said humanitarian aid
was better than "trying to whip out our (fighter jets) and show
them how big they are".
While his rise in politics may appear to have been swift,
former interim Liberal party leader Bob Rae said Trudeau has
been thinking about it much longer.
"From the time I met him, my sense was that he very much saw
this as a long game for him. And one that only had one
conclusion."
($1 = 1.2930 Canadian dollars)
(Editing by Amran Abocar and Alan Crosby)