We had two opponents wanting to decriminalize weed, 75 ridings with solid electoral support, five sheets of high-powered campaign platform, a fat Northern Gateway Pipeline running through Alberta, a whole lobby of multicultural ethnic votes from Chinese, Israeli, Eastern European and Indian immigrant communities… Also, a quart of debt-to-GDP target by 2021, a quart of taxes lowered, a case of niqab worn during citizenship ceremony, the omnibus C-51 bill, and two dozen media outlets endorsing us. Not that we needed all that to win these federal elections, but once you get locked in a serious election campaign, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the C-51 bill. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a Conservative in the depths of a debate on the “Anti-Terrorist Act”, and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.