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It would be far easier for Canadians to keep track of their political parties, it struck me as I heard Justin Trudeau and then Tom Mulcair make their respective cases for forming government, if politicians stuck to colouring within the lines set for them by convention and tradition.

But, no. They have to go and willy-nilly upset the applecart, and on the same day to boot, at roughly the same time. In the space of 90 minutes, with nary a warning, political Canada changed utterly. Nothing is sacred anymore.

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For Trudeau, the Liberal leader and erstwhile Dauphin, did something truly remarkable in Ottawa Tuesday morning: he embraced full-on the mantle of rip-it-up reformer he’d promised, with refreshing zeal and conviction, back when he was still an underestimated upstart with a famous last name.

Meanwhile NDP Leader Mulcair, in an eerie bookend – assuming the Liberals and Dippers didn’t plan this synchronicity – was in Toronto preparing to address a Bay St. crowd and stolidly, soberly make the case for his party as a dependable, business-minded, eminently non-radical custodian of the public purse.