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All in all a strong day for democracy in Canada. In Parliament and on the ground. Promises kept. #TeamTrudeau — Gerald Butts 🇨🇦 (@gmbutts) March 9, 2017

Indeed, in on-the-record interviews at the end of the week with several Liberals, there was a clear message: This was a feature, not a bug. Liberals had campaigned in the past election to allow more free votes in the House of Commons, and Trudeau himself had committed to allowing the grassroots to choose local candidates rather than have candidates forced on them by party HQ.

But there have been more than a few Liberals — in Parliament and on the ground — who have been grumbling privately that Trudeau, his close advisers and the party brass have not been living up to their own rhetoric.

Just a little over a week ago, in Markham, Ont., Mary Ng had won the Liberal nomination in Markham—Thornhill. Ng had quit her job in the PMO and had been parachuted into the riding over the objection of many local Liberals.

There were angry accusations that the party had rigged the process in favour of the leader’s favourite rather than the riding’s favourite.

Ng would win but in a riding of 70,000 electors, where 24,000 had voted for Team Trudeau in 2015, just 186 people showed up to vote at the nomination meeting.

Fast forward to last Wednesday in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent, where more complaints had surfaced about the party’s heavy hand after the local mayor, Alan DeSousa, had failed to get the “green light” from the party’s secretive candidate-vetting committee.