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EDMONTON — While the other party leaders were slugging it out in Toronto at the first debate of the federal election campaign, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was basking in the warm glow of the already converted.

From Victoria, where he announced modifications to the already announced first-time home buyers incentive at a housing construction site while photogenic babies played behind him and a handful of local candidates cheered him, to a short visit to a candidate’s HQ in beautiful Kamloops to a big rally in Edmonton, he was surrounded by the adoring.

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He had but one “media availability,” in the morning, wherein he mostly deflected tough questions or was, shall we say, disingenuous.

When reporter Michelle Zilio of The Globe and Mail, which has led the coverage of the SNC-Lavalin issue, asked why former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board boss Jane Philpott shouldn’t be able to talk to the RCMP about the Trudeau government’s fulsome efforts to get SNC a plea bargain “without being muzzled by cabinet confidence,” Trudeau replied: “We actually took an unprecedented step in giving out a waiver that allows for all issues related to this matter to be discussed, investigated and followed up on. … This is something we did that is unprecedented because we know that it is important for people to examine what happened in this matter. And that’s why we took this step.”