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Until about a month ago, Justin Trudeau’s road to re-election looked relatively straightforward, and ran through Quebec. To wit: Combine the existing 40 Liberal seats in the province with gains at the expense of the NDP, whose Quebec caucus had been made vulnerable by resignations and general ennui regarding the party’s dwindling fortunes in the province.

Then, use the ensuing beachhead of Liberal seats to counter the party’s expected losses in Ontario. After that, pray there is enough momentum on various pipeline projects in the west to placate the country’s restive oil patch. Crucially, present the party as the lone viable progressive bulwark against the regressive, xenophobic right. Finally, liberally sprinkle the whole exercise in Trudeau charm and, voila!, another election won.

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The SNC-Lavalin scandal has laid waste to this plan, and not only because that Trudeau charm is suddenly, brutally diminished in the wake of cabinet resignations and continued wretched headlines. Instead, by allegedly interfering with the judicial process regarding SNC-Lavalin for nakedly Quebec-centric reasons — namely, out of fear of how SNC-Lavalin’s fortunes would affect October’s provincial election — the Trudeau Liberals have instead invoked another stereotype of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec: unscrupulous, over-privileged and underhanded.