Just over a year before the next federal election, the Conservatives are on the verge of a civil war.

The seeds were sown in 2017 when Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer barely defeated libertarian Quebec MP Maxime Bernier in the party's leadership race.

Scheer ended up with 50.95 percent support in the 13th round.

Bernier, who was the favourite going into the convention, wound up with 49.05 percent in the party's complicated voting system.

Scheer's come-from-behind victory was attributed to support in later rounds from Conservative Bible-thumpers and Quebec dairy farmers. Bernier even lost his own Quebec riding of Beauce to Scheer.

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The close race reflected deep divisions between the party's economic and socially conservative wings.

In 2017, Scheer named Bernier as the critic for innovation, science, and economic development. Later, Bernier became the infrastructure critic as the two maintained an uneasy truce.

But that's over now this week after Scheer kicked Bernier out of his shadow cabinet.

Scheer justified this on the basis that Bernier had posted a chapter from his unpublished book on a website. This section outlined his opposition to a quota system for dairy products, which Scheer supports. 

That, in turn, led right-wing Rebel Media to launch a petition demanding that Bernier be reinstated into the shadow cabinet.

"By tossing Bernier to the back bench for expressing a mainstream conservative principle, Scheer is also tossing over 49% of his own party’s supporters to the back bench too," Rebel Media declared on its website.

Liberals and New Democrats are loving the Conservative family feud.

This morning, Canadian Press reported that Mad Max, as he's sometimes called, announced that he had raised $30,000 over 24 hours to pay off campaign debts.

This comes as the Conservatives and Liberals are in a dead heat on the CBC poll tracker, which provides weighted federal polling averages.

The Conservatives are at 35.6 percent, compared to 35.4 percent for the Liberals and 18.9 percent for the NDP. The Greens are far back at 5.5 percent.

Based on these percentages, the CBC poll tracker projects that the Liberals would win 157 seats and the Conservatives 141 seats (at an 80 percent confidence interval) because of how the support is distributed across the country.

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From this, it's clear that the dispute between Scheer and Bernier has the potential to inflict serious harm on the Conservatives as they prepare for an election.

It might even contribute to another Liberal majority under Justin Trudeau.

Bernier's support in the Conservative leadership was most pronounced in many urban areas, including Vancouver.

He had a significant margin of victory over Scheer in every Vancouver riding with the exception of Vancouver South, which is held by Liberal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

The Conservatives will never have a chance to win Vancouver Centre, Vancouver East, or Vancouver Kingsway.

But in the past, they have won in Vancouver Quadra and they were very competitive in the new riding of Vancouver Granville in the last election.

In these areas, however, Conservatives were far more supportive of Bernier than Scheer in the leadership race. Economic conservatism trumps anti-abortion conservatism in this part of Metro Vancouver.

So in the end, two of the biggest winners in the Conservative civil war could well be Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who represents Vancouver Granville, and Liberal MP Joyce Murray, who represents Vancouver Quadra.

Liberal MPs on Vancouver's North Shore will also likely benefit.

That's because many hard-core Bernier supporters won't go out of their way to help Scheer by contributing money and knocking on doors on behalf of Conservative candidates.

In fact, Bernier-loving economic conservatives might not even step forward as candidates if they see their favourite libertarian getting pilloried by the boss.

The NDP is hoping to make inroads in three-way races. This is particularly so in wealthier ridings like Vancouver Granville and Vancouver Quadra, where the left-of-centre party has not been very competitive.

NDP Leader Jagneet Singh was provided with a gift in these two areas when Trudeau decided that the federal government would buy Kinder Morgan's Canadian assets.

The company's Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project is incredibly unpopular on the West Side of Vancouver.

But now, if Bernier-loving Conservative voters in those ridings decide that they want to punish Scheer, the main beneficiaries will likely be Wilson-Raybould and Murray.

This is not good news for Singh as he tries to climb out of a political hole created by a string of by-election defeats.

His job is on the line in the next federal election. And if he can't win seats where voters loathe the pipeline, he's not going to last very long as leader after the election.