Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau celebrates as he watches team Canada score against team Sweden in the gold medal hockey game at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games during the party’s biennial convention in Montreal, Sunday, February 23, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Well, that was easy.

The Liberal Party’s constitution stipulates that their senators are automatically members of caucus. And when Justin Trudeau expelled 32 Liberal members from caucus, he missed by six days the 27-day notice period for proposing amendments to the party constitution.

No problem. In the final policy session of the Liberal convention in Montreal Sunday morning, the plenary adopted a sense of the convention resolution that allows the national executive to “interpret the constitution in a manner consistent” with the new Liberal caucus.

It passed 525 to 32 — by an amazing coincidence the same number of senators kicked out of caucus. And with that Trudeau, who had been taking it in from a front row seat, was outta there. By the time the co-chairs got around to proposing a big thanks to him, he had left the building. It’s not every day a leader gets a standing ovation in absentia.

The Liberals didn’t even bother to offer him up for a closing news conference or scrum, to the predictable annoyance of the media. As if voters would be also be irritated, particularly on a morning Canada had just won Olympic gold in men’s hockey.

It was clear after Trudeau’s keynote Saturday afternoon that his close entourage had no intention of doing a “media avail” at the closing of the convention. “When you’ve hit a walk-on home run, walk on,” quipped Trudeau’s top adviser, Gerald Butts.

One reason to walk on was to avoid what happened to Andrew Leslie, the former commander of Canada’s land forces, whose $72,000 in real estate fees and moving costs were in the news cycle last week. In an otherwise impressive political debut at a Friday keynote, Leslie divulged he had been talking to the Conservatives as well as the Liberals before joining the red team. This turned his subsequent newser into a drive-by shooting, with reporters demanding to know who was courting whom. In the middle of all this, the Conservatives sent out a series of chatty career move e-mail exchanges between the retiring general and the PMO. Welcome to the NHL, Andy.

Journalists were also permitted to roam the floor freely and sit-in on most break-out sessions, in stark contrast to last October’s control-freaky Conservative convention in Calgary, where Stephen Harper also skipped town without meeting the media.

It was the only mishap at a convention that was otherwise a significant success. While predictably thin on content, it was extremely well organized, and the delegates were in a very good mood. The Liberals did not look like a third place party — nor will they be after the next election. And this for a party left for dead after the 2011 election — and which, until Trudeau’s accession to the leadership last year, it might as well have been.

A party that has been chronically in debt raised $11 million last year — more than $2 million in December alone, two-thirds of that in online donations. A party that could barely count 50,000 members now has more than five times that number. A party that couldn’t find quality candidates is now seeing contested nomination battles everywhere (it helps if you went to Brebeuf or McGill with Justin). A party that was in the ditch is now on the march, cruising comfortably in first place in the polls.

All of which put the delegates in a very positive mindset. Journalists were also permitted to roam the floor freely and sit-in on most break-out sessions, in stark contrast to last October’s control-freaky Conservative convention in Calgary, where Stephen Harper also skipped town without meeting the media.

In Montreal, there were two brands in the Liberal window, the party’s and the leader’s. The Liberal brand equity is in a party of government which, from the beginning of the 20th century, was in office for nearly 75 of the last 114 years. Trudeau’s begins with name recognition. Most people 50 and over, as one Liberal strategist put it, “have known the guy since the day he was born, or think they do.”

So the Liberal logo was literally hanging from the ceiling, and Trudeau’s trademark slogan of “Hope and Hard Work” was the convention’s theme. The hall looked very sharp.

And the delegates, who filled it to standing-room only for Trudeau’s Saturday keynote, were in a mood to be on their feet. Trudeau didn’t disappoint them.

On the issue of Senate reform in the wake of the expenses scandal, he pointed out that Harper, “as a candidate, promised that he would never appoint a senator. Not a single one. Then, after he got elected, he appointed 57 of them.”

He added: “By the way, anyone who put Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau in the Senate might want to be careful about making judgement a campaign issue.” Zing!

There was only one problem with Trudeau’s delivery of his text: there wasn’t enough French in it, only seven out of 39 minutes, as the French-language media did not fail to note. And this in Montreal. It’s the kind of time allocation between the two languages usually heard in Toronto.

Most of Trudeau’s speech was about Liberal positioning on “the middle class”, which received no fewer than seven mentions.

Nathalie received several mentions, as well. Nathalie was everywoman, made up by Trudeau and his writers. She lives on the South Shore of Montreal, takes the Champlain Bridge to work in either an office or in retail in the city. She worries about the debt her family is carrying, worried she’ll never have enough to retire, is “anxious about her future, probably even more so for her kids’ future.”

It worked in the hall, but on paper it was pretty thin. Afterwards, the hunt was on for Nathalie.

In the media centre, someone suggested that if Trudeau and wife Sophie’s new baby is a girl, they’ll have to name her Nathalie Justine.

L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy, the bi-monthly magazine of Canadian politics and public policy. He is the author of five books. He served as chief speechwriter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1985-88, and later as head of the public affairs division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992-94.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.