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There were nevertheless moments of relatively high drama — between Trudeau and Harper on the hot-button question of Bill C-24, which allows the government to revoke the citizenship of convicted terrorists who are dual citizens — and between Trudeau and both his opponents, when he responded to an attack by Mulcair on his father’s War Measures Act imposition, in 1970, with an impassioned defence of Pierre Trudeau’s legacy. “I am incredibly proud to be Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s son,” he said, to applause from the audience.

It made for some interesting fireworks, for a time; but to my ear at least, Harper had the edge in many of the substantive exchanges, especially on the core foreign policy questions of refugees, ISIL, Canada’s support for Ukraine and free trade.

Trudeau was already on the defensive heading into the contest due to a video, strategically leaked by the Conservative war room less than 48 hours before debate time. In the clip, he said: “And I’ll give you the quote so that you guys can jot it down and put it in an attack ad somewhere that the Liberal party believes that terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship. Because I do. And I’m willing to take on anyone who disagrees with that.”

He didn’t back away from his policy Monday, rather accusing Harper of divisive politics and insisting that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” The Conservative leader fired back that, had the government not taken the anti-terrorist measures it has, including C-24, Canada might already have suffered attacks on the scale of 9/11. Hyperbole? Almost certainly. But he made his point.