MONTREAL—Once a lightning rod for sovereigntist voters and a beacon for Quebec federalists, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is fast fading from the radars of both groups in his home province.

Quebec’s longstanding love-hate relationship with the late father is morphing into collective indifference towards the son.

Trudeau was initially such a polarizing Quebec figure that his own party — under Stéphane Dion — did not want him as a byelection candidate against Thomas Mulcair in Outremont.

When he ran in Papineau in the 2008 general election a year later, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe depicted the possible election of Pierre Trudeau’s son as an MP as a threat to all that francophone Quebecers hold dear.

“The future of the Quebec nation mostly plays out on the language front in Montreal,” Duceppe argued in an impromptu campaign speech delivered to local Bloc election workers. “For the sake of the respect of our language and our nation, we must beat Trudeau on Oct. 14.”

In those early days, the mere mention of Trudeau’s name was enough to fire up any nationalist crowd. But it also brought scores of federalist voters to the Liberal fore and in that first campaign Trudeau beat the incumbent BQ MP in Papineau by more than a thousand votes.

Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon and the major sovereigntist rally held on the occasion of the uncontested nomination of Duceppe’s successor, Mario Beaulieu, as the candidate in the Montreal riding of La-Pointe-de-L’Île.

Beaulieu spoke for about twenty minutes to almost 1,000 supporters bused in from across the province, and managed to not say Trudeau’s name a single time. Instead, the rookie Bloc leader devoted almost half of his speech to the NDP.

It was a remarkable but totally understandable omission. Beaulieu is fighting for the life of the Bloc. In that battle, Trudeau’s Liberals pose little more of a threat than the Green party. If anything, BQ strategists could use a more vigorous Liberal showing in Quebec next fall to divide the federalist vote to their party’s advantage.

At this juncture, the reverse is happening.

A CROP poll published on Friday pegged Liberal support at 20 per cent among francophone voters, 27 points behind the NDP. (The BQ at 15 per cent is even further behind in francophone Quebec.) Province-wide, CROP has Trudeau’s party at 25 per cent and the NDP leading with 42 per cent support.

Other polls, albeit with smaller samples, paint a less grim Quebec picture for the Liberals but they concur on the negative direction of the party’s fortunes.

The Liberals are essentially competitive in and around their Montreal allophone and anglophone strongholds.

It is a course familiar to those who followed Michael Ignatieff’s descent into oblivion in 2011.

At the time, then-Quebec lieutenant Denis Coderre famously accused Ignatieff of running a Toronto-centric operation. Trudeau’s Quebec organization may be more grounded in Montreal but that comes with its share of disconnects and drawbacks.

The city is a rare Liberal oasis in a Quebec desert, making it easier for Trudeau’s Quebec brain trust to forget that, in the rest of Quebec, their party is mostly a shell.

As the Liberals fight among themselves for winnable Montreal seats, the task of rebuilding the party from the ground up in other regions of the province takes a distant second seat to internal machinations.

It is no accident that the Conservatives — with little connection to Montreal — tend to have a better take on what makes the other Quebec regions tick.

Things might have been different if Philippe Couillard had lost last year’s provincial election. That victory deprived Trudeau of a possible reservoir of non-Montreal candidates connected to the more extensive provincial Liberal network.

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Since Trudeau’s father retired thirty years ago the federal Liberals have done best in Quebec in the few campaigns that have hinged on the unity issue. To this day, they seem to have a hard time seeing their way past a theme that the defeat of the Parti Québécois has removed from the picture of the next federal election.

To wit: The English-language TV ad the party released on Monday focuses on Trudeau’s fiscal policy but the latest French-language one is all about the leader.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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