Canada

MONTREAL

On a stopover at Pearson airport on the way back from a vacation a few weeks ago, I spent half an hour sitting a few feet from Marc Garneau as we both waited for a flight.

It was late on a Saturday night and he was absorbed with his BlackBerry. I did not want to interrupt what might be pressing Liberal leadership-related work with airport chit-chat. As it turned out, none of the dozens of Montreal-bound travellers who were crowding the gate area did either.

It struck me at the time that Justin Trudeau would never have been left alone to deal with whatever was on his phone in so public a Canadian venue.

It also struck me that for all the notoriety that comes with having been the first Canadian in space and with a subsequent prominent role in Parliament, neither seemed to translate into the kind of popular familiarity that usually attends political household names.

All of this is a detour to get to the fact that the first consequence of Garneau’s withdrawal from the Liberal race a month before the April 14 leadership vote and a bit more than a week before the only Quebec debate of the campaign is that he will be spared a double personal humiliation.

The former astronaut entered the campaign last fall knowing that the odds of a victory against Justin Trudeau next month were long but still confident that, in the worst case scenario, the runner-up position was his.

Since then even that consolation prize has become anything but an ironclad certainty.

Garneau tried and failed to make the ballot box issue that of substance versus flash, and experience versus untested charisma.

Instead, whatever oxygen was left for a candidate other than Trudeau ended up breathing life in the Joyce Murray campaign and her proposal of a rapprochement with the NDP.

It may not significantly alter the outcome of the ground war next month but looking at the virtual ink expended on her campaign in the media, Murray certainly beat the rest of the non-Trudeau pack including Garneau in the air war.

According to his own assessment he ends his run more than 50 points behind Trudeau with little to show for months on the trail.

The same is at least as true in Garneau’s Quebec home-base.

Tellingly the only Quebec riding that numbers more than 2,000 people eligible to participate in the mid-April vote is Trudeau’s inner-city Papineau riding.

Had Garneau been on stage for the final leadership debate set for Montreal on March 23, he would have performed in front of an audience dominated by Trudeau supporters.

There is little doubt that six months ago, much of the Liberal establishment sought a credible alternative to Trudeau. On the day Garneau launched, he said all his caucus colleagues had encouraged him to enter the race.

But the party’s quest was really for an understudy, someone who could step into the leading role if the top-billed star faltered before the curtain rises next month.

Today, it is no longer obvious that most Liberals see the need for a plan B or that those who still do believe it could ever be implemented, regardless of what the last campaign month may bring.

It is not only that the Trudeau campaign has signed up myriad supporters. That in fact is a bit of a red herring for with or without them, the outcome of next month’s vote would likely be the same.

The fact is that the pro-Trudeau trend is at least as solid among the Liberal base as it is with the fans who have flocked to the party as part of the leadership campaign.

This is not a case of a party being taken over by a cult but rather a case of a party luring tentative converts to what has long been a defining Liberal cult.