Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford held Canada’s largest city hostage to his antics for more than a year before the clock finally ran out on his mandate at City Hall.

In the face of an ongoing substance abuse scandal, there were still enough voters willing to look the other way or even to vindicate his conduct to make a re-election bid credible.

Up to a point, it is fitting that Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s campaign finale includes a big weekend rally in the Ford heartland.

Disrespect for Canada’s parliamentary and judicial institutions; a casual insouciance towards the rule of law and a stingy approach to accountability have all been defining features of the last Conservative mandate as have major ethical lapses and a high-level attempt to cover some of them up.

The voters least likely to question whether the Harper government’s moral character warrants its re-election would presumably be those who believed that Ford was still worthy of office.

As for the many Tories who privately say they will hold their nose to support their party on Monday, the appearance of Doug and Rob Ford on the radar of the Conservative campaign has the merit of ensuring that they will at least vote with their eyes wide open.

Harper has had 75 days to send Canadians a signal that a re-elected Conservative government would bring a less corrosive more consensual approach to the running of the federal government and he has used the time to do the opposite.

His campaign has been most consistent at playing to the lowest common denominator. He has played wedge politics on some of the most sensitive areas of Canada’s national life.

From week to week there has been a steady dumbing down of the Conservative message.

Indeed, watching Harper play game show host daily to the ka-ching sound of a cash register this past week it dawned on me that it might be time to rehabilitate former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.

He took a beating just for flashing a card that said “No 2-tier health care” at the end of the 2000 election debate. At the time the move was roundly denounced as a self-defeating gimmick that reflected poorly on his party.

In retrospect, Day should probably be given credit for engaging his audience on the basis of a minimal amount of policy literacy. Appealing to the intelligence of voters was once his successor’s cup of tea but that was before Harper finally secured a majority government four years ago.

But then, as voters were again reminded this week, majority rule has rarely brought out the best in any party.

The day Justin Trudeau set out to ask Canadians to give the Liberals a majority was also the day the news broke that the co-chair of his campaign was dispensing strategic political advice to one of Canada’s major pipeline operators.

At a time when the party was obsessed with not letting anything get in the way of its pre-election momentum, it still took Trudeau’s campaign 24 hours to move from defending Dan Gagnier’s actions to agreeing that they were inappropriate.

That can only beg the question of how long would it have taken for a majority Liberal government to distance itself from one of its insiders? In their last spell in office a decade ago, the Liberals blurred their share of ethical lines.

Gagnier’s email was meant to provide TransCanada with post-election insights as to how to best advance its Energy East pipeline project with the next government. He suggested the corporation waste no time getting on the good side of the next finance minister.

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If the Liberals win on Monday, one might want to check whether Trudeau’s environment minister is up to the task of standing up to his or her finance colleague. On the notion that a Liberal environment minister might carry a stick big enough to be a cabinet player the pipeline industry could not hope to bypass or ignore, Gagnier’s email is silent.

Polls suggest that the battle for government on Monday will come down to a fight between Harper and Trudeau. In their dreams, each would like to win a governing majority. The last week of their respective campaigns has given voters no cause to want that dream to come true for either of them next week.