A clever opposition just schooled the Liberals at their own media game. After about 18 months of the Justin Trudeau show, the opposition finally hit a home run.

Trudeau’s secret $10.5-million deal with Omar Khadr sent two Conservative MPs — Peter Kent and Michelle Rempel — south of the boarder. The pair took to U.S. media outlets to air their grievances.

Out of the norm, for sure. But, why wouldn’t they?

According to a poll by the Angus Reid Institute, more than two-thirds of Canadians feel Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the wrong choice in making Khadr part of the exclusive 1% club.

And, American’s should know that. After all, this is about them as much as it is about us.

Peter Kent’s Wall Street Journal op-ed — “A terrorist’s big payday, courtesy of Trudeau” — and Michelle Rempel’s interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Network has some Liberals losing their minds over the need present a unified front, sweeping our country’s dirty little secrets, like the millions to Khadr, under the rug.

Since those two brushes with Main Street U.S.A., coverage intensified. Social media became littered with righteously indignant claims of “country first” and demands of non-partisanship beyond our borders by all MPs “no matter what party” they represent. Nonsense.

Was there a case made for non-partisanship when former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told the world that Canada “did not deserve a seat” on the UN Security Council — exactly at the time when Canada was running for said seat?

Or was this the kind of non-partisanship that former prime minister Jean Chretien showed when he told a room full of diplomats that former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s foreign policy ignored Africa and shunned China — on the heels of an official visit to China?

The only difference here is that Kent and Rempel aren’t either former prime ministers or leaders of a political party. And instead of relaying their message in the presence of media, they did it directly with media.

And while politics shouldn’t be a game of an eye for an eye, the outrage on social media claiming this to be a first should probably stop now. It’s not a first.

Senior Liberals, including even the prime minister’s principal secretary, went one step further and accused the opposition of propagating an anti-Trudeau gush south of the boarder ahead of NAFTA talks next month.

An equally clever tactic: tethering the Conservative media roadshow to NAFTA. This is a way for the PM’s handlers to mitigate the potentially-difficult NAFTA discussion with U.S. President Trump in the coming weeks and try to distract Canadians from the disastrous Khadr decision. Also not a first, but a valiant effort nonetheless.

No one is rooting for the prime minister to fail in protecting Canadian interests abroad — but the suggestion that Kent’s op-ed or Rempel’s interview threatens 450 million people in three countries trading more with more than $1 trillion is frankly outrageous.

This is what losing a communications battle looks like. Don’t blame the opposition for that — it’s their job.

— Melissa Lantsman served as a senior political adviser to the previous Conservative government. She currently lives, works and casually observes politics in Toronto.

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