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I don’t want to overstate this. It may be that another, more presentably vapid candidate will get into the race, on the not unreasonable calculation that what the party wants is not long, boring discussions of what the candidates stand for but a winning smile and the right mix of region, race or gender, and this brief summer of wonk will be over.

Policy, after all, rarely decides these things, least of all in Canada. I can’t think of one thing that Lisa Raitt stands for, for example, though it is fascinating to imagine what an ideas-based MacKay campaign would look like. Or perhaps the race will go to a Patrick Brown type, with nothing much to say but masses of determination and organizational ability: Leitch, perhaps.

Still, for now it is still possible, if inadvisable, to hope. And in the wonks’ primary, the early front-runner is clearly Bernier. The former small business, industry and foreign minister has been staking out radical policy positions it seems every other day. He would deregulate telecommunications, opening the wireless industry to foreign competition. He would dismantle the system of agricultural quotas and import tariffs known as supply management. He’d break open Canada Post’s monopoly on first-class mail, and privatize the corporation. He’d allow foreign airlines to carry passengers between Canadian cities.