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During the 1980s and ’90s, John Turner and Jean Chrétien fought Tory free trade agreements. Canada’s very sovereignty was so imperilled in one election, the Liberals ran campaign ads showing the border being erased. In government, they merrily embraced the very kind deals they so articulately denounced and then proceeded to expand their worst qualities.

And who can forget Pierre Trudeau deriding the Tories in the ’70s for wanting wage and price controls to fight inflation? An idea so batty, after mercilessly mocking it on the hustings, he immediately enacted it after being re-elected. How poetic the son’s own corker of a reversal now seems.

The point is not, as Liberals would like it to be, that everyone else is too timid to fess up and agree that deficits are salvations. Rather, it’s that if that’s the case, then why are we only learning about it now? Not, say, after any of the Harper budgets that were rubbished over their deficits, which, it’s logical to presume, Liberals opposed only because they contained too few zeroes.

Another old faithful, the Charter, probably pushes shame up against even Liberal limits, after welcoming Bill Blair, Toronto’s police chief during the G20 policing disgrace, as a star candidate

Or, which is more likely true, that the substance of the matter is incidental and, like fighting free trade or wanting to delete the notwithstanding clause, this one is about saving Liberal bacon. A task, to be fair, that’s not as easy as it once was. Their usual symbiotic foes, the separatists, are now a bit of a stretch, with Quebec again on track to reject separatism in favour of the NDP.

Another old faithful, the Charter, probably pushes shame up against even Liberal limits, after welcoming Bill Blair, Toronto’s police chief during the G20 policing disgrace, as a star candidate. Indeed, the candour for which Trudeau deserves kudos is not a new-found spine about deficits, but his frank admission that supporting Bill C-51 was calculated to deflect Conservative attacks.