Is it time for Justin Trudeau to get specific on policy?

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is meeting with his caucus in Edmonton this week to discuss the upcoming session of parliament and, more importantly, the road ahead to the 2015 election.

At his first media availability on Tuesday, one of the first questions Trudeau was faced with was a familiar one.

The query, to paraphrase, was 'where is your policy?'

Trudeau responded in the same way he always does. He said that "an electoral platform gets put forward at election time."

"In the meantime, we are building up a team of experts of great candidates, listening to community leaders and ordinary Canadians who are expressing a level anxiety about the future," Trudeau said identifying some of the different economic challenges for the different regions across the country.

"These are things that a responsible government does an awful lot of listening to, does an awful lot of drawing on experts and building solutions that will be made clear in time for the next election."

[ Related: Conservative MP slammed for untimely Twitter joke about Trudeau residence break-in ]

Despite Trudeau's strong showing in the opinion polls, critics have long argued that the Liberal leader speaks in generalities and that his policies lack detail.

The Tories have used this perception to characterize Trudeau as an intellectual lightweight.

"Justin Trudeau has admitted he doesn't have any economic policies and thinks 'the budget will balance itself', while urging reckless spending that would kill jobs," Conservative MP Chris Warkentin, said in a statement emailed to Yahoo Canada News.

"Justin Trudeau and his team have consistently demonstrated one truth: they lack the judgement to lead."

And it's not only Conservatives and New Democrats that have attacked Trudeau. During the leadership race, in 2013, Liberal MP Marc Garneau tried to embarrass his colleague.

"For weeks now I have said Justin Trudeau owes it to Canadians and to members of the Liberal Party to tell us what he stands for and what qualifies him to be leader of the party and the country – now, not after this race is over," Garneau said in a statement challenging Trudeau to a one-on-one debate.

"It is time for Justin to step up and defend his ideas because if he can’t defend them to me in front of a room full of Liberals, he will never be able to do it against Stephen Harper."

[ Related: Trudeau confident Liberals on right track to victory in 2015 federal election ]

Over the past year, Trudeau has fleshed-out some of his ideas.

He says that he supports the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline to the United States but not the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to British Columbia's west coast; he's talked about more financial transparency for MPs; he put forward a motion to empower backbench MPs; he has new plan to appoint senators; and he's promised more money for municipal infrastructure.

But when it comes to his supposed primary plank — helping the middle class — he hasn't offered many specific solutions.

While the media and some in the public are getting a little impatient, experts suggest that, tactically speaking, opposition parties need to tread carefully when laying out their platforms.

"I always emphasized the risk for opposition parties...of having voters not know what you stand for outweighed the risk of having your policy stolen," Don Guy, who was considered the mastermind behind former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty's election campaigns, told Yahoo Canada News.

"But it's equally important to do the homework necessary to put out good policy. I'd surmise that is the balancing act Team Trudeau is managing for their candidate."

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Political communications consultant Marcel Wieder suggests that the current Liberal strategy is a good one.

"As the third party they are given more leeway than the Official Opposition who are expected to respond to every government policy or announcement," Wieder told Yahoo.

"This is historically where the NDP had the flexibility of picking and choosing the issues that they wanted to respond to. Now Trudeau is enjoying some of that flexibility."

As for when we might see some more meaty policy planks, Wieder, the CEO of Aurora Strategy Group, notes that there are generally two schools of thought.

"First, if you are behind, get your policy out there if your leader is unknown and untried. This was the strategy employed by the provincial Tories under Harris who released the Common Sense Revolution a year ahead of the election. Their campaign was policy driven as Harris was relatively unknown. To a lesser extent the Liberals under Chretien released the Red Book in advance of the 1993 election and it allowed Chretien to heal a divided party and focus on the issues at hand," Wieder notes.

"Others prefer to release the platform close to the election to deprive their opponents the opportunity to train their guns on the perceived flaws that they will try and exploit.

"In this case there is sound reasoning for Trudeau to hold off since Conservatives have significantly greater resources that they can use as has been demonstrated with [former Liberal leaders Stéphane] Dion and [Michael] Ignatieff. The inability of Dion to properly explain his carbon tax doomed his chances early on and Ignatieff's inability to articulate the platform after being pilloried for 'just visiting' are examples of why Trudeau still remains cautious."

In other words, don't expect to see a detailed 'Liberal government' road map anytime soon.

(Photo courtesy of The Canadian Press)

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