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As he finishes off the year hiding away in Costa Rica, Justin Trudeau must be thinking how glad he is that 2019 is finally over.

Sure, he won the election in October — barely — but let’s be honest, 2019 was a rough year for Trudeau. He had to deal with the SNC-Lavalin affair, losing cabinet ministers and top advisors, faced an ethics probe that found he broke the law, became a Twitter target of Donald Trump, confused Japan for China twice and lost a war over garbage with Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte.

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And that’s just scratching the surface.

Trudeau started out the year with some polls putting him three to four points ahead of the Conservatives. His January cabinet shuffle was seen as putting a new face on a government confident of winning another majority government.

For the most part, the PM and his Liberals had recovered from the troubles of 2018 like his disastrous trip to India, the Punjabi Pratfall that had him mocked around the world. As voters were looking towards October, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer had yet to connect with voters and Trudeau seemed a sure thing.