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If nothing else, we now know that the trial of Mike Duffy will be exhaustively chronicled, in real time, with no tawdry detail left un-Tweeted. At times Tuesday it seemed every journalist in Canada was engaged in the play-by-play.

But will Canadians beyond the beltway, or south of the Queensway, tune in, get mad at the Senate fat cats and power mongers all over again? Or will they gaze through the headlines with a fatalistic, heard-it-all-before shrug? With Election 2015 looming, this is the critical question. And the best answer is neither clear-cut nor satisfactory: It depends. For each of the major parties, including the Conservatives themselves, there are potential opportunities in this, the closest political Canada has seen to the O.J. Simpson trial, as well as the obvious pitfalls.

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The consensus view, much asserted in the past 48 hours amid a cascade of set-up coverage (Five things you need to know about the Duffy Trial; Your Duffy Trial Primer; All About Duff, no Guff!), is that the trial of Mike Duffy on 31 criminal charges, including fraud, breach of trust and bribery, could be Stephen Harper’s Waterloo. It has been likened to the Gomery inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal, accounts of which rocked the Liberal party in 2004-05 and contributed to Paul Martin Jr.’s being held to a brief two years as prime minister. This trial comes at a most awkward time for Harper, with his bid for re-election already hampered by an economy gone soft, and his party suffering from the sclerosis common to all decade-old Canadian administrations.