The Aftermath
And so the people of Canada have chosen their 39th Parliament. Generally, there weren’t any surprises as to the result that most people really care about: who gets to form the government. As predicted for the past week or so, the Conservatives managed to get a minority formed. But of course, I’m not most people and I’ve followed this election closer than before.
I remember about three general elections before this. And before that, Kim Campbell and Brian Mulroney were allegedly in power. Imagine that, I was alive when they were still in power. I say allegedly because, being six and under, I don’t remember a thing about them. So much like my friends, I have basically lived my whole life with Jean Chretien as the Prime Minister.
So once I started learning about the terribly exciting world of politics, Jean Chretien was leading the Liberals to majority after majority, Joe Clark returned to attempt to save the Progressive Conservatives, Preston Manning had just hatched the Reform party, the NDP were getting screwed after Ed Broadbent left, and the Bloc were those guys from Quebec. Some things just don’t change.
The hugest changes came in 2004. By this time, I’d already learned how the political system works here in Canada. The first change was that the faces changed. Suddenly, Jean Chretien was gone, Preston Manning (and Stockwell Day, I guess) was gone, the Progressives were gone, Alexa McDonough was gone, and Lucien Bouchard was gone. The other change was that the Liberals were starting to slip.
Finally, after 12 years of the Reform rising to form the opposition and the Progressives getting knocked down to nothing, the new Conservative party, which is approximately 80% Reform and 20% PC, gets into power. In fact, let’s forget that the Conservatives include Progressives, since they are mostly Reform. A party that was created just over a decade ago has gained power and kicked out one of the oldest parties in the country.
Also, the Conservatives, hardcore Westerners that they are, managed to snag some seats in Quebec, and ten seats at that, where before, they had none. They also managed to take quite a bit of Ontario. Of course, even with all of those breakthroughs and all of the screwing up the Liberals managed to do during the campaign, they still came out with only 124 seats. Compare that to the Liberals with 133 seats in the last Parliament and 103 this Parliament.
In a hilarious turn of events, Belinda Stronach is still in office over in Newmarket-Aurora. Heck, if I were a Conservative, I would be bloody pissed off at Stronach for crossing the floor. They must really like her.
The other surprising win was Michael Ignatieff in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. Ignatieff is the Harvard professor who won the Liberal candidacy by default, although a lot of members of the riding association think that there’s a conspiracy to get him into an easy riding so he can take the Liberal leadership. He’s also taken some flak for his views on the war on Iraq and torture.
Other than the Liberals, the other loser party, I think, is the Bloc. They came into the election thinking that they’d take over Quebec and ended up losing seats. I think that much like the fear of Conservatives in Canada, the fear of the sovereigntists at the last minute made people think twice and go for the Conservatives, which paid off handsomely for them.
The other winner is the NDP, who went up eleven seats. I was worried there in the last week of the election that they’d screw up with Layton practically begging for votes. In the end, they made a lot of gains.
The riding I watched closest was definitely Parkdale–High-Park. This was where Sam Bulte was MP. In case you missed my previous posts, Sam Bulte was the MP who had a hand in the awful, awful proposed copyright reforms and who held a fundraiser hosted by the music, movie, publishing, and software industries, who have the most to gain from copyright reform.
Basically, Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, called her out on the fundraiser and she responded with vitirol. The story spread quickly all over the Internet and her refusal to acknowledge that this looked really bad at a time when politicians have an obligation to not arouse any suspicion, made it worse.
In the last days of the election she called anyone who opposed her pro-user zealots, threatened to sue Michael Geist, and write an editorial in which many of her points were lifted from the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s own materials. In the end, her constituents booted her and replaced her with the other NDP candidate to take a Toronto riding from the Liberals.
And now a few words on the next government. I don’t think a Conservative minority is a bad thing, unlike a few of my friends who see the Conservative government as the sign of the coming of the Antichrist. Change is what Canadians wanted and change is what they got. But, they are not aligned with Conservative ideals and the minority reflects that.
Contrary to popular belief the government will not fall in two weeks. The opposition has an obligation to try and keep this going for as long as possible. If they don’t, the party responsible for the government toppling will be getting some hate from Canadians. The result is that Canadians will vote in a Conservative majority just so that some idiot party won’t go forcing another election.
Besides, the Liberals need time to get their party sorted out what with Martin stepping down. Also, the NDP are in the best position they’ve been in for a while. The Bloc can probably get some more power to the province thing going with the Conservatives. Of course, Stephen Harper can’t just go around doing stupid things like giving free votes on gay marriage or anything for the next two years, at least.