For weeks, the Liberals have been managing to rebrand themselves as progressives on the grounds that Justin Trudeau would run deficits. Trudeau's pledge in late August to run deficits -- a dramatic reversal of his fierce pledge six weeks earlier not to run deficits -- isn't really hard to figure out. Trailing in the polls, the Liberal leader took a well-used page out of the Liberal playbook: feign left during an election campaign in order to court the progressive vote.

Black, like other members of the Canadian establishment, undoubtedly recalls the Liberals winning the 1993 federal election by posing as progressives -- promising huge new investments in housing and child care -- only to have Liberal finance minister Paul Martin do an about-face, tossing those commitments aside and embarking on a messianic, Bay Street-pleasing crusade of cutbacks to eliminate the deficit "come hell or high water." How much easier even to imagine Justin Trudeau -- younger and more impressionable than Paul Martin -- falling into line with corporate Canada, after the votes are counted, of course.

It also seems significant that Justin Trudeau didn't even bother to attend the big annual Labour Day parade in Toronto. NDP leader Tom Mulcair marched at the very front, arm in arm with national labour leaders, signalling his party's longstanding support for working people and the fight for greater equality.

So perhaps it's not surprising that Conrad Black, a class warrior on behalf of the business set, is uncomfortable about Mulcair.

But Trudeau is another matter. That's why Black is signalling to his conservative National Post readers: Don't be fooled by the left-wing posturing. Justin can be trusted.