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On the first sitting day of the House of Commons since her defection, former Conservative MP Eve Adams kept a low profile. Anyone looking for a preview of how she would stack up in debate against Finance Minister Joe Oliver in the GTA riding of Eglinton-Lawrence will have to wait.

But it will take more than a few bouts of sparring in question period to put Liberal minds to rest over the latest addition to Justin Trudeaus caucus.

A week after the Liberal leader rolled out the red carpet for Adamss floor crossing the episode remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma for most Liberals.

On that score a weekend trip to Vancouver that featured a handful of conversations with veteran party insiders on the West Coast mostly confirmed that the move has baffled Liberals from coast to coast.

Those insiders like most observers start from the premise that Trudeaus team of advisers is a seasoned one. In their minds, such battle-hardened strategists would or should have expected both the editorial backlash and the internal discontent that attended the decision to bring Adams and by the same token former Stephen Harper confidant Dimitri Soudas on board.

Few buy the line that Adams is so ideally placed to take on Oliver on the battlefield of the Conservative income-splitting measure as to be worth her weight in political gold.

As flawed as the policy of allowing parents to split their income for tax purposes may be, it does not have the legs to move mountains of votes that a tax hike for instance would have.

In the same breath, most of them dismiss the notion that Soudas has such invaluable insights on what makes a now-familiar prime minister tick on a debate podium as suggested among others by former Conservative minister Stockwell Day as to make signing up his fiance an irresistible proposition.

If anything, Adamss inclusion on the Trudeau team has more to do with a dogged Liberal quest for deterrence on the field of dirty tricks than with making inroads in voting intentions.

Conservative spin doctors have been quietly bragging about having collected dirt on Trudeau ever since he ran for the leadership.

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Liberals Eve Adams play a defensive move in attack-ad war: Hbert