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Prime minister Stephen Harper, ardent supporter of the oilpatch, never made a major speech to sell a new pipeline during his decade at 24 Sussex that I know of. He didn’t want to be cast as a servant of Big Oil. That was a trap set by his opponents. He avoided it to the extent he could.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, thus far, are proving less than nimble in dodging their own dead-fall trap — which is, of course, entitlement.

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Indeed, in the burgeoning controversy over moving expenses for senior Prime Minister’s Office staff — a rising boil the government sought to lance Thursday evening, with partial repayments and apologies from top aides Gerald Butts and Katie Telford — they fairly thrust themselves into the pit.

The Liberals’ historical Achilles’ heel, after all, is profligacy. Grits are arrogant wastrels, goes the narrative. This was the storyline that won Brian Mulroney a majority in 1984 and put Harper in power in 2006. And it is the narrative Trudeau’s Liberals are now feeding, as they rack up a list of spending mini-scandals they could easily have avoided, with the application of humility and common sense.