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If he wants to commiserate he could always speak with Harjit Sajjan or John McCallum, both of whom have had to carry some foul water for Team Trudeau on the ISIS mission and Syrian refugee files, respectively. Welcome to cabinet. They say there’s no “i” in team, but there’s supposed to be a “Trudeau” in there somewhere.

Yes, the prime minister was on hand to greet the first refugees, but not to explain his government’s slipping targets. He let the Defence Minister twist for months before chipping in at the announcement of the new mission, albeit without knowing key details like who, exactly, Canadian forces would be training.

I don’t blame the Prime Minister’s Office. You don’t put the PM out there to step in cow patties. You put him out with pandas. You put him out with Obama. You put him out where he does best, which — for this prime minister, anyway — is to emote and inspire. But sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Oil might be the commodity fueling our budgetary pain, but scarcity is the political commodity I’ll be tracking come budget day. How scarce will Justin Trudeau be, or will he take a leadership role in reassuring a population whose confidence in our economy is at a 20-year low?

Is this even a fair criticism, given that Jim Flaherty (and then Joe Oliver) always led the budget jamboree, both on the day and in the immediate aftermath, whether good or bad? They did, but no-one doubted that Stephen Harper was the real budget wizard, with it memorized chapter and verse. And he used the budget as a communications shield and sword, particularly in difficult economic times like the spring and summer of 2009.