Things haven’t been going all that well for Justin Trudeau in the last few weeks.

Poll numbers have him running third, a good pace behind the other two parties. He’s had candidates resign in frustration over his support of Bill C-51. He’s had trouble carving out a niche between Thomas Mulcair and Stephen Harper.

His announcement last week was supposed to change the channel. Trudeau unveiled a suite of reforms intended to tune up Canada’s democratic institutions. Everything from allowing his MPs to vote freely on most legislation, to axing the first-past-the-post voting system and making his own office subject to access-to-information legislation.

We sat down with Trudeau to talk about whether that’s just nice language, or whether it’s something more concrete.