If Mark Carney did blow the trade talks with the Americans last month for political reasons, the latest poll by Leger for Postmedia shows it is working.

Carney’s Liberals now sit at 49% nationally, while 57% approve of the government’s direction and 58% approve of his performance.

LILLEY: Winning polls is easy – selling a trade deal is not Back to video

In all three measures, the Liberals saw a three-point increase from Leger’s last poll at the beginning of August.

“What Canada did was they walked away from the best deal in the world, so they could fight with President Trump politically,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a TV interview with NBC earlier this week.

Lutnick has been making the claim repeatedly that Carney walked away for political reasons, not economic ones. Politics was clearly part of Carney’s calculation, and it is clearly working for both him and the Liberal Party.

Poll numbers tell the story

While the Liberals are at 49% nationally, the Conservatives are 16 points back at 33%, and the NDP is on life support at 6%. Carney’s team sits at 59% in British Columbia, 57% in Atlantic Canada, 53% in........

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