Jaime Watt joins Power & Politics host Evan Solomon each week to look at how issues making waves in Ottawa resonate with Canadians.

Political Traction with Navigator's Jamie Watt appears weekly on Power & Politics. (CBC)

Monitoring the House of Commons' question period, mainstream media and the conversation on social media, Watt and his team at Navigator Ltd. determine which issues gained the most attention in official Ottawa, and then measure how much traction those issues managed to find with Canadians outside the nation's capital.

This week, the numbers show the government's F-35 fighter jet purchase remains the top issue issue in Ottawa, albeit at lower numbers, but the conversation is changing.

In Ottawa, the focus is on betrayal — who told the truth, when did they tell it, who knew what?

In Canada, the conversation is more about the cost — is it too much?

While the government scored a small "win" in the declining momentum behind the controversy, that national shift in conversation may provide some opportunity for the opposition to question the cost of the planes in light of other government spending priorities, rather than focusing on the process of how the purchase was made.

Battleground Alberta

The hard-fought campaign in Alberta between the Wildrose party, which leads in the polls, and the incumbent Progressive Conservatives, is grabbing Canadians' attention, while making a lesser impact in Ottawa.

The gap in mentions between the Wildrose and PCs is closing, as the PCs managed to increasingly define the campaign conversation about Wildrose leader Danielle Smith and the party's position on moral issues, suggesting momentum is with the PCs. The challenge for the Wildrose entering the final week of the election is to reclaim the narrative, while the PCs must prevent that from happening.

(For the sake of transparency and full disclosure, note that Jaime Watt works as an advisor to Alison Redford.)

This week's final issue is Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's announcement of a streamlined program to attract immigrants trained in skilled trades.

In Ottawa, most pundits applauded the changes and viewed them as necessary — but Canadians just didn't seem to be paying attention. It was a classic policy wonk issue that doesn't inspire much passion from ordinary Canadians.

Here are the numbers: