He may well wonder: why not seek a mandate to tackle that Trump threat head on? The last time Canadians went to the polls in 2015, they were electing someone who could deal with Democrats at the White House. That now feels like a lifetime ago.

Maxime Bernier probably wasn’t trying to make life easier for Justin Trudeau when he put his fellow Conservatives on the hot seat by speaking out against the prime minister’s alleged “radical multiculturalism.”

And NDP leader Jagmeet Singh likely wasn’t thinking too much about boosting Liberal fortunes when he decided to shoot back at some insults recently fired at him by a fellow New Democrat, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. (“I think she’s better than that,” Singh said in reply to Notley’s description of him as naive and “elitist.”)

While the Liberals are mostly spectators to these internal skirmishes within the opposition parties, the spats could help tilt Trudeau’s thinking toward calling an election sooner rather than later. Divided opposition parties help keep incumbent governments in power — as former prime ministers Jean Chrétien or Stephen Harper would surely attest.

While Trudeau doesn’t often model his political decisions on what Chrétien or Harper would have done, this current prime minister surely can’t help but see these Conservative and NDP spats as good news for the Liberals in the summer of 2018.

So like it or not, the snap-election question is back in the news again this week — and the opposition parties are helping to make the political case in favour of one.

The fight between Singh and Notley, for instance, clearly points to schisms within the larger New Democratic Party — not just over pipelines, but over Singh’s leadership. Rumblings of discontent within the NDP have pushed Singh into running as the candidate in Burnaby South whenever the by-election is called. He also said he’d stay in Burnaby to run in the next federal election. If nothing else, Trudeau could cut Singh’s 2018-19 campaign costs in half by calling a full federal election than simply a by-election.

Meanwhile, within the federal Conservative party, Bernier continues to be the leadership rival who won’t go away quietly for leader Andrew Scheer. It wasn’t long ago that Scheer finally got Bernier to be quiet about his allegations of an unfair 2017 leadership race as well as his controversial talk of ending supply management in Canada. Now Bernier is popping up again, this time on the hot-button issue of immigration and diversity. The renegade MP was doubling down on the statements on Twitter on Tuesday, saying he’d simply been repeating what he argued in the 2017 leadership race.

But Scheer doesn’t really need anyone opening up Conservatives to renewed charges of intolerance toward immigrants or multicultural groups. While it may play well in some quarters of Canada, it was precisely those cultural flash points — over “barbaric” practices or the wearing of niqabs — that helped Trudeau win the 2015 election.

In the month or so since the snap-election prospect was first raised here at iPolitics in the wake of deteriorating relations with the U.S., the arguments in favour of a vote this year — as opposed to the fixed date next year that the Harper government passed — have continued to build. Since then, Trudeau has shuffled his cabinet and announced that Parliament will reconvene on schedule, Sept. 17, without a throne speech. That can be easily be viewed two ways: that the Liberals are thinking it’s business as usual; or, that they’re already in election-ready mode.

Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert weighed in on Monday, laying out a strong case for Trudeau to send the country to the polls this fall. The main reasons she cited revolved around the worsening political climate, largely with Donald Trump’s White House, but also with the provinces. In that context, new Ontario Premier Doug Ford could also be an accidental ally for Trudeau, at least when it comes to making the argument for an early election.

As Hebert put it: “the notion that it could be in the national interest to send Canada to the polls early has been reinforced by the post-Ontario-election deterioration of the federal-provincial climate.”

To be clear, there are still lots of powerful arguments against Trudeau calling an election in the immediate future. There is the matter of an imminent Quebec election, for instance. Premier Philippe Couillard said on Monday that the official campaign would kick off on Aug. 23 and the vote would be held on Oct. 1. That still leaves Trudeau open to calling a federal election later in the fall, though, especially if Trump imposes punitive tariffs on the auto sector in the coming weeks and sends the economy here into a tailspin.

Polls show that Canadians are still rallying around Trudeau in this ongoing tension with Trump. He may well wonder: why not seek a mandate to tackle that Trump threat head on? The last time Canadians went to the polls in 2015, they were electing someone who could deal with Democrats at the White House. That now feels like a lifetime ago.

Another very good reason is that American Republicans, who tend to dabble in Canadian politics and send their expertise northward, are engaged in a knock-down-drag-out election of their own. Catching them distracted by domestic elections would keep outside funding and Republican dirty tricks to a minimum.

The biggest argument against an election this year revolves around potential charges of cynicism and opportunism by the federal Liberals. Granted, that is a risk. But is it any more risky than waiting for things to deteriorate further between Ottawa and Washington or Ottawa and the provinces? And while it is no doubt opportunistic to capitalize on divisions in the opposition, other prime ministers have elevated that opportunism to a strategy — and they’ve been called canny for doing so.

Ultimately, a lot of political decisions come down to arithmetic and calculation — in this case, Trudeau might well be wondering whether current division in the opposition adds up to a second term for Liberals.

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