They could be billed as the Odd Couple of Canadian politics: Andrew Scheer and Kevin O’Leary.

Yet there they were last week, the federal Conservative leader and the Canadian-born celebrity from U,S. television’s Shark Tank, on the hustings together as the Tories tested their training wheels for next October’s federal election.

It is far too soon to know whether climate change and carbon pricing will be the defining issue in next October’s federal election.

With Donald Trump, the erratic child president calling the shots from Twitter Control in his bedroom, new issues are bound to be created and old ones re-invented. Any one – new trade demands, tariff barriers, border security, nuclear confrontation with North Korea, a Middle East crisis with Saudi Arabia, and so on – could take centre stage in the Canadian election, as could an unexpected purely domestic issue.

Now that he doesn’t have former premier Kathleen Wynne to kick around any more, Doug Ford – being the sort of politician who, like Donald Trump, needs an antagonist to vent about – has turned his sights to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

His attacks escalate by the week.  “We’ve taken Kathleen Wynne’s hand out of your pocket … and we’re going to take Justin Trudeau’s hand out of your pocket,” he told a cheering crowd of 600 that assembled last week to celebrate his first 100 days as premier.

Forget NAFTA. Forget Donald Trump. Forget the riveting battle over his Supreme Court nominee. Forget that astonishing encounter on a Capitol Hill elevator when two furious women shamed a Republican senator into doing the decent thing.

Put all that aside and consider this moment in Canadian history.

Cannabis – marijuana, pot, weed, call it what you will – will be legal across the country the week after next, on Oct. 17.