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Liberals who hijack the flag and the peace,Tories who raise money by blaming Ottawa elites.General elections based on arrows and slings,These are a few of my least favourite things.

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the past couple of days have reminded me why it’s unfortunate that the Liberals and Conservatives can’t both lose the next election. Of course they could, but that would mean an NDP government, so let’s be careful what we wish for.

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But this was an unedifying spectacle, as our political leaders tried to curdle the self-righteous anger of their supporters.

The sight of Jean Chrétien and Justin Trudeau celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Maple Leaf, against the backdrop of the biggest red and white flag ever made, was a reminder of why Canadians gave the Liberals the boot in the first place.

The subliminal message was that you can’t be Canadian without being Liberal; that “Canadian values” and the national identity are uniquely Liberal in their composition. The rhetoric harkened back to the Pearsonian era, when peace was made and Canada was a “force for good” in the world. Mr. Chrétien referred to a lost place in the past that never really existed. “It was a time when Canada was respected. We were showing the world what it was to build a modern society with the diversity we had.”