Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with the Aga Khan on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 17, 2016. Trudeau is not the first politician to face heat for a ride in the Aga Khan's helicopter. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

A week and a half into the winter sitting, it’s become one of the most frequently asked — and at press time, the least satisfactorily answered — questions on the Parliamentary conversation-starter circuit: Why are the Conservatives devoting so much House time and partisan energy to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ill-advised holiday jaunt to the Aga Khan’s private island?

It’s not like we weren’t expecting it to make the cut when Andrew Scheer rose in the chamber last Monday to kick off question period after a month-and-a-half hiatus.

After all, it was the first chance he’d had to put his concerns on the parliamentary record since the release of Mary Dawson’s final ruling on the trip. The now former ethics watchdog concluded the trip did indeed violate multiple sections of the federal conflict of interest rules.

Her conclusions make Trudeau the first sitting prime minister to be found to have broken the law, which would be nearly impossible for his political adversaries to resist pointing out at every available opportunity. Technically, however, it’s a statute and one that’s only been in force for a little over decade, which means it’s only ever applied to two prime ministers.

Still, it’s not hard to see why the now infamous tropical getaway would dominate the leaders’ round during the first cross-aisle face-off of the new year. It might very well spill over into the second, and possibly even a third.

But as we hit the midway point of the second week back on the Commons clock, it’s still leading the Conservative message track. In the House, it’s still regularly making it into the first 15-minute block after which the collective attention of the audience, including those in the press gallery, is always at risk of starting to wander.

It was even the cornerstone of the party’s first designated opposition day of the sitting, which invited MPs to devote a full day to debating whether members found to have breached the federal conflict of interest regime should be obliged to pay back any public money spent as a result.

It seems that’s how the Conservatives are hoping to keep the outrage alive for another rotation through the news cycle.

They’re hoping to shift the focus from the trip itself (although they can still drop the occasional reference to “Billionaire Isle”) to the cost of staffing and securing the prime minister and his family during their tropical getaway — “more than $200,000.” That’s according to their newly launched Pay It Back campaign, which was to be unveiled by the two-man ethics critic team of Peter Kent and Jacques Gourde on Wednesday afternoon.

Why the repositioning? Simply put, because even though Dawson’s report on the trip is relatively fresh, it didn’t actually include any new revelations on the trip itself. After all, Trudeau has never denied accepting the Aga Khan’s invitation or climbing aboard a private helicopter to get there. He just defended his decision to do so, and insisted that it was fully within the rules.

Ultimately, Dawson disagreed. That wasn’t based on new facts or evidence, but on her interpretation of the law, which was at odds with Trudeau’s take. Since she was the final arbiter, her view trumps his, at least in this context.

From the Conservative perspective, the best possible outcome would have been for Trudeau to challenge Dawson’s findings, and insist that he was right all along — or even just shut down and refuse to address the issue at all.

Instead, a few hours after the report was released, he made his way down to the Commons foyer to assure reporters and the public that he fully accepted her findings, and would be taking steps to make sure to get her successor to sign off on future vacation plans in advance.

What he didn’t do, however, was promise to pay any money back, most likely because unlike most Canadian political controversies, this one wasn’t really about the potential misuse of public funds, but whether it was appropriate to accept the hospitality of a private individual. (As it turned out, no it was most emphatically not.)

Since then, the Conservatives have been working overtime to link the prime minister’s lack of judgment with the outlay in public funds, despite the fact that there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t have cost the same — or possibly more — had Trudeau paid the Aga Khan for the food, accommodations and any other incidentals, or even declined the invitation in favour of an entirely different vacation destination.

But that’s not nearly as catchy as a call to “pay it back.” And that, in a nutshell, is why the Conservatives are still going on about Billionaire Island and law-breaking prime ministers.

Will it work?

Who knows — but there’s at least a method to the seeming madness, so it’s probably worth it to stay tuned.