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The Tories deliver OK. They just like to create a lot of doubt first, to make their eventual decisions to co-operate seem all the more magnanimous. As if they’ve only barely allowed themselves to be persuaded, because their great big hearts have overpowered their minds.

But that reflex to say an initial no is so strong. It seems to have gotten the best of them on Tuesday morning when, foolishly, not one Conservative showed up for a meeting with Mayor Jim Watson.

He’d invited all the local candidates to party-by-party “briefings” on important city issues. Watson is a Liberal and you can imagine candidates from other parties worrying that he was setting them a trap. Part of the arrangement is a short public appearance afterward, at which reporters get to ask the candidates what they thought of what they heard and, inevitably, whether they’d support this or that city demand for money. It’s a bit of a trap, but not one any politician should be snared by.

Anyway, Liberal or not, Watson is the mayor of Ottawa. He’d arranged some anodyne staff presentations for candidates on city things the federal government has a big stake in, as a funder or a planning partner or both: economic development, transit and social housing. The one on social housing is a bit demanding, complaining Canada has no national housing strategy. The others are as straight-ahead as can be.

It’s shocking how little would-be (and even sitting) federal and provincial legislators know about these things. I’ll never forget interviewing a candidate who didn’t know city council had aborted its first light-rail plan. This campaign isn’t a blitz; if you’re a federal candidate, you could do worse than to get some expert counsel on what the City of Ottawa does, or is planning to do, with well over $1 billion in federal money.