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With Justin Trudeau and the Liberals’ botched SNC-Lavalin response now rolling into Week 8, there exists a golden opportunity for Andrew Scheer to drain the swamp.

Make that swamps.

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Yes, the Conservative leader needs to rid the capital of the considerable Liberal murk surrounding SNC, but he also needs to use Trudeau’s troubles as a pretext to rid his movement of its more dubious elements so that disillusioned Liberal voters have more than one new home to pick from should they abandon ship.

And while its axiomatic that you never interrupt an opponent while he’s beating himself up, it’s also true that you should never let a good crisis go to waste. Scheer needs to use Trudeau’s crisis as an opportunity to let Canadians know where he stands on values.

Photo by Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS

This is not to accept that Scheer currently has a values problem; it’s only an acceptance of the fact Liberals — having no good answer on SNC — will use the perception of a CPC values problem — and any spiky tone — to their advantage every chance they get, as evidenced by the recent kerfuffle over the “United We Roll” protests on Parliament Hill. With each bad news cycle, the Liberals will shift further from “sunny” to “smeary” ways.