Party Poopers

The Canadian elections were... interesting. The Conservatives managed to get a majority, sitting at 166 seats out of 308 as I sit. They gained a lot of seats in Ontario as the Liberals cratered to their worst showing in their history, dropping to 34 seats. The NDP ran the BQ off the board and put themselves into the official opposition, getting 103 seats; the BQ was trimmed down to four seats. Both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe lost their seats, but Green Party leader Elizabeth May managed to get her party's first elected seat ever.

The Liberal party got a standing-eight count, which had the party looking in two different directions. Iggy's concession speech was looking to establish a vital center to Canadian politics while Bob Rae was open to a Liberal-NDP dialogue and Justin Trudeau spoke glowingly (albeit reluctantly as a good Liberal scion) of the "progressive" victories in Quebec of the NDP. Iggy reminded me a bit of Joe Clark, the guy on the wrong side of where things were going with his party.

We now have a Conservative majority in Canada... that will mean Conservatives can government for four years without looking over their shoulder at the opposition. The NDP has a big Quebec caucus to integrate and the Liberals have to wonder if they've went the way of the British Liberals who were swamped by Labour into a niche market of the white-collar left.

Quebec politics will prove the most interesting. Does the NDP become a force in provincial politics, or will the PQ maintain its standing despite its BQ analogue getting torched tonight? Many provincial governments don't run on federal lines, so the PQ has room for hope, especially when the current Liberal government in the province has its ethics issues.

Interesting result. A fascinating night for a poli-sci geek. NDP boss Jack Layton now gets the big stage as the oppostion leader, and has both an opportunity to become the leader of the Canadian left or to blow it if he becomes a bit too knee-jerk socialist. PM Harper now gets to run things his way, which could lead to overreaching and an interesting 2015 election; at least this majority makes sure that we'll wait that long barring a Conservative internal meltdown.

 

Comments

[Bene D]

He (Jack Layton) won't blow it "if he becomes a bit too knee-jerk socialist", he'll blow it if he blows Quebec, messes up on a personal level, his health fails, or he doesn't bring the new Quebec members into partnership with english Canada MPs. Learning to teach them sing from the same song book will take skill.
To think the opposition is going to have any effect is naive. I hope I'm wrong but I'm not optimistic.

It was a fascinating election, glad you were able to watch.

[Anne Wolfe]

Congratulations for paying more attention to our neighbors in the north than most of us--like me, who recently became aware that an election was actually happening. I must admit I have a sister-in-law with duel American-Canadian citizenship and I still usually don't know what is going on up there. We should all pay more attention to them, because they are our neighbors and we might learn a bit from watching them. What, I don't know, since I don't watch them.