There's a wide disconnect living in Europe between how Justin Trudeau is covered by Canadian media and how Europeans look to him as an exemplar, a poster child for tolerance, modernity and the kind of leader to envy.  I've had a Spanish customs agent at the airport and her colleague respond to my passport saying, "Your prime minister—just such the right attitude, and so handsome."  I've had a Somali cabbie in London talk my ear off about how wonderful he thinks Trudeau is, especially in comparison to British rightwing populists.  Even my law professors can be a bit gaga about JT.

I'll admit one of the benefits of being out of the country is being able to enforce the self-discipline necessary to avoid the kind of lowball partisan bickering that so fascinates the Ottawa bubble.  I didn't realise the Conservatives are still banging on about Trudeau taking a vacation on the Aga Khan's Caribbean island, or that apparently the foreign ministry made some posters of Trudeau and that's a huge scandal, or that the NDP are mad he appointed the former Ontario attorney general as commissioner for official languages.  Canadian scandals — especially when compared to what's going on in the White House or Whitehall these days — seem almost laughably quaint.  Or — as More and Richie Cunnigham would say — humdrum.

This week, things seemed to come to a head on this disconnect, as Trudeau was in Europe for the NATO summit, but back home various commentators were openly musing about the need for a "reset" of his seemingly stalled agenda.

Trudeau's first budget did a fair bit, reversing Harper-era cuts and giving more money to low- and middle-income families.  But there's a persuasive argument that he's drifted since, boxing himself out fiscally with the deficit and the scandal-mongering about his every misstep is starting to take hold.

With the Conservatives finally about to elect a new leader, and the NDP race heating up, Trudeau needs to pivot to what's next.  His political raison d'être remains focused on helping the middle class and those trying to join it.  That's a sound economic credo for today's inequitable times, especially given the rising spectre of nationalistic populism.  But he needs to add more meat to the bones.

I took flack from Liberals in Ottawa for writing a column during the last election for saying Trudeau wasn't offering enough on healthcare.  Well, he wasn't then, and his recent, truncated healthcare negotiations with the provinces revealed an alarming hands-off approach.

Now, I'm both a fan of and a friend of Jane Philpott (and her son), and she's a very capable minister, with a strong vision for the healthcare sector.  She needs to be given the tools so she can finish the job.

One obvious area where Trudeau can reinvigorate a stalled agenda and stay on his broader theme of help for a struggling middle class is in healthcare.  He should do what he essentially did the last time Ontario threatened to "go it alone" on a social policy innovation: step in and do it bigger and better with the power of the federal government.  He did it on CPP, fulfilling the promise of the (now defunct) Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.

Trudeau should do it again, and bring in a true national pharmacare programme across the country.  It's the right thing to do morally: people shouldn't go broke to pay for drugs.  It's the right thing to do politically; it has even seemed to revive Premier Kathleen Wynne's faltering poll numbers.  And it's the right thing to do for his brand: it plays to his stated goal of helping the middle class in a tangible, lasting way.

"The greatest Canadian" is the founder of our healthcare system.  (There's a statute to the founder of the National Health Service near my flat in the UK, too.)  Trudeau could earn some ink in the history books by being the guy who brought in the biggest national expansion to healthcare in a generation.