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The two main opposition parties are in a tricky spot — and not just because each faces a protracted leadership void. The Trudeau government appears to be finding its footing, much as Stephen Harper’s first government did a decade ago, by paying attention to sentiment beyond the Ottawa bubble.

It is a development the Conservatives in particular will rue, as they’d held out great hopes for a self-inflicted immolation on the scale of John Diefenbaker’s, following his historic crushing victory in 1958. Increasingly, that does not seem to be in the cards. Like Harper in his time, the Liberals are adjusting as they go.

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The notion that Harper’s team ever paid attention to anyone but the man himself will strike some among his critics as risible. But in the minority years, 2006-2011, the Conservatives did just that, repeatedly.

There was the surprise overture to Quebec nationalists in late 2006, recognizing the Quebecois as a nation; there was the formal apology for Indian residential schools in 2008; there was, of course, Jim Flaherty’s $56-billion Keynesian deficit budget of 2009. There was the phased pullout from Afghanistan, announced ahead of the 2011 election. There was the dogged determination, throughout the Harper decade, to eschew even a whiff of social conservatism in official policy.