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Stephen Harper's Conservatives Win Canadian Election
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has won a majority of seats in a historic election that saw the left-leaning New Democratic Party become the official opposition.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves to the crowd following his speech on election night in Calgary, Alberta, Monday, May 2, 2011. Harper won his coveted majority government in elections Monday. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)
The Conservatives won 167 of the 308 electoral districts, earning 40% of the vote, Elections Canada reported.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) claimed 102 seats, while the Liberals took 34.
Mr Harper, who took office in 2006, has previously won two elections but never before held a majority government.
Canadians voted on Monday in the country's fourth general election in seven years.
Mr Harper went into the vote having headed two successive minority Conservative governments since 2006. His party held 143 seats in the House of Commons prior to the dissolution of the last government.
Analysts say the prime minister has slowly nudged the country further to the right during his five-year tenure.
He has lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoided signing climate change legislation and become a stark advocate of Arctic sovereignty.
He has also increased military spending and extended Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.
"We are grateful, deeply honoured, in fact humbled by the decisive endorsement of so many Canadians," Mr Harper told supporters on Monday in the city of Calgary in the country's Alberta province.
Mr Harper said Canadians "can now turn the page from uncertainties" with a majority government.
New Democratic gains
The election marks the first time in Canadian history the Liberal Party did not finish either first or second.
They have historically been the main party in opposition when the Conservatives have held power, but the NDP has now taken over that role.
"It's tough to lose like this," Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff said.
"Defeat is a teacher and now we have to learn the lesson of defeat and look at ourselves in the mirror," Mr Ignatieff said.
NDP leader Jack Layton jubilantly greeted his supporters in Toronto on Monday evening.
"Spring is here, my friends, and a new chapter begins," Mr Layton said.
The NDP went into the election with 37 seats, compared with 77 for the Liberals and 143 for the Conservatives.
They have emerged with 102, as the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois slumped badly, analysts say.
The separatist Bloc Quebecois, which seeks independence for the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, suffered heavy losses, retaining only four seats out of the 47 seats they previously held.
Mr Harper's government was forced into an election after a no-confidence vote in parliament.
It was found to be in contempt of parliament because of its failure to disclose the full costs of anti-crime programmes, corporate tax cuts and plans to purchase stealth fighter jets from the US.
Opinion polls in the run-up to the election had suggested the left-leaning NDP was experiencing an unexpected surge in popularity and threatened to quash Mr Harper's hopes of winning a majority government.
"I just want to make sure our country keeps going, creating jobs, and that we do not take a risk of a minority parliament that drives us off the cliff economically," Mr Harper said on Monday.
Mr Harper, a 52-year-old career politician, had warned that a win by the NDP could lead to out-of-control spending and higher taxes.
NDP leader Jack Layton, who favours some high taxes and more social spending, has been a critic of Alberta's oil sands sector, the world's second largest oil reserves.
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50 Comments so far
Show AllChalk up one concrete political result of the Osama news blitz.
Cf. Einstein, Albert, on the only two infinite things in the universe.
Silver lining (such as it is): The Globe and Mail is reporting that Ignatieff has just resigned as head of the Liberal Party.
Of course, how he could be a head of a party when he doesn't even have a seat in Parliament is a mystery to me, so maybe it just took him twelve hours to realize the brutally obvious.
Don't let the door whack you in the ass, neoliberal toady Ignatieff!
Happy with a right-wing evangelical fundamentalist with an ideological bent are you?
Chancellor Harper I am referring to -if that needs explaining.
so much for the 'emigrate to Canada' plan.
no doubt that corporatist virus that hit western liberalism is turning out to be globally lethal.
liberals, ya gotta start picking sides. this is killing all of us. many of us had to do it, you can, too.
I'd keep that plan, drone.
The NDP -which is certainly far left of the U.S. Blue Party and much more coherently socialist than the U.S. Green Party went from 37 to 102 seats, almost a three-fold increase, while the Conservatives went from 143 to 167, just a 24 seat gain and over-matched by the liberals 43 seat loss.
This Election is saying the opposite of what you think!
The Pseudo-Liberals and the Separatists were abandoned, the Conservatives made a crucial -but minor- gain, and the Real-Liberals / Democratic Socialists ALMOST TRIPLED IN POWER!!
I think Canadian "liberals" ARE "picking sides" and I think that their choices are a lot better than you have noticed.
Good Luck,
-matti.
I enetred this thread expecting to read gloating from our right wing friends and sobbing from many wishy washy progs. What I did not expect, but was pleasantly surprised to find, was a rational and perceptive analysis. Thanks ever so much.
I'm going to have to keep an eye on this too. I'd thought about moving to Canada a year ago in the hopes of moving to a civilized country, but figured things weren't different enough up there to justify the move. I hope it's good news as you say, even if it doesn't look like it from down here, eh?
The NDP hasn't been the chief opposition party in Canada until just now. This could well be a historic breakthrough. That I believe happened with British Labor in 1918 and the next general election Labor won it. This was with good times which should have favored the Conservatives. With times the way they're likely to be in four years the odds are much better for the NDP.
Can any Canadian here speculate what role the Bin Laden assasination had on moving the fence-sitters to the conservatives? I know it had a lot to do with the self-destruction of the Liberals under Ignatieff and the movement of all real "liberals" to the NDP, but the NDP did have even more momentum before this event.
And the little conspiracy nut in my head makes me think the timing of this killing was carefully planned. They probably know about this hiding place for months. The US would rather not have what they would consider left-wingers running things to our north.
Let's get real. The American leadership has never much cared who runs its neighbor to the north; when the rubber hits the road, it always does what the American leadership wants anyway.
OBL had little or no influence. it really wasnt that big of a thing here -- no street parties or anything. most people here, as Ol' Harper said, took the news with "sober satisfaction". the Man-on-the-street interviews were mostly: "Really? its about time, why'd it take 'em so long?" I actually don't think that most people up here believe the official story-- its too much like a bad NCIS episode. Definitive DNA test results in less than a day? bullshit. those tests take weeks.
the Cons won because the "progressive" wing of the old PC party, that swithched to the Liberals after Harper took over, went running back when they thought the NDP might win enough seats to govern.
The timing was not too good - it would make some fence-sitters figure (falsely) that Harper knows more about foreign policy than Jack and that he was "right" to extend the Afghan mission. Anything that gave him what appeared to be even an ounce of extra credibility when one doesn't have time to think it out before voting is a bad thing.
Someone from Pakistan was telling me a few months ago that they all knew where OBL was but when I tried to get more detail he clammed up. Haven't heard from him for a while.
Worse than that is the fake sex scandal and the phone calls luring people to fictional polling stations by telling them that their real polling station had been shut down. How many people fell for that trick in close ridings!
Saw this tweet from Naomi Klein (put in the real http rather than the twitter version):
NaomiAKlein Naomi Klein
Stephen Lewis (yes, my father-in-law) breaks down historic left breakthrough in Can election on @democracynow
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/3/the_right_and_left_claim_success
Also features Judy Rebick (aka Judes). Another reason for B'nai Brith to disapprove of both of them!
Let me posit this conspiracy theory I posted previously. Give it some careful thought because, as you dig down and line up what has already occurred, it gains traction:
I wondered about this coincidence myself but would not have thought that Canada was important enough for the USA to sway an election. However if the person the ignorant minority of Canadians voted in was going to destroy Canada slowly and de facto integrate it with the USA, then that is a much bigger prize.
Canada would remain Canada in name only and a North American religious right-wing evangelical theocratic thuggery would have dictatorial rule.
Chancellor Harper of the Northern Theocratic States?
Anyone who has any doubts regarding the profoundly hard-right attitudes of many Canadians should visit the comment section of Toronto Star articles dealing with politics and policy - even US foreign policy.
The comment sections of the major Canadian news outlets are heavily moderated/censored. I have submitted hundreds of comments and none have ever made it to the screen.
I nearly always get my comments on the Star no problem. They do have to be polite and non-inflammatory. But the major part of the comments are tea-party-right, and far to the right of the Star's editorial and commentary positions, so I have trouble believing this is due to post moderation.
Actually verified - the conservatives hired a publicity firm which employs people to comment on stories that may seem to have a "leftist" slant to them. I am sorry, but I don't have the inclination right now this late in the evening to go look up the name of the firm, but the cons have been paying people to comment on perceived leftist sites.
Harper's steady hand on the tiller will steer Canada straight into hell. The tar sands will expand, turning precious fresh water into smoke at a faster and faster rate. I doubt now that we will see a ban on oil tankers along the pristine west coast or any substantive action on climate change.
The only bright note is that GREEN Elizabeth May won a seat, so there will be at least one functioning brain in the house. I'm proud to have voted for her.
The NDP nearly triples its seats and comes damn close to attaining majority and the "only bright note" you can see is that one Green won a seat?
Surely the NDP and her see mostly eye to eye?
I was excited and was rooting for the NDP, but wasn't expecting this. A strong NDP doesn't really mean anything now that the Conservatives have majority power. If the Conservatives wanted, they could really tear Canada up with the 4 years they have now and make it even more like the US (in the bad ways).
The only hopeful thing for Canadians is the federal government doesn't have the same power over all provinces as the US federal government has over its states. So, if you live in Quebec, you're not necessarily going to have to put up with the same right-wing policies that would be exerted on Alberta and Ontario since they voted overwhelmingly Conservative this time. The bad news for those thinking to immigrate, Quebec is possibly the most difficult province to assimilate into unless you're francophone already.
I've been considering the option of immigrating there myself, but I don't know now. If it's on the road to being more and more like the US, what's the point? At least parts of the US have nice weather.
The one thing that a strong NDP means for sure is that when the Conservatives damage gets them chucked, the NDP will need to go much less far to attain majority or coalition.
They're the "opposition" now. That means a lot.
This is another example of the merits of instant runoff voting.
60% of voters voted against the right wing Conservatives, yet we will have a majority gov't with dictatorial powers for the next four years. If this shit keeps up, we'll need an Egyptian-style uprising, because the majority can not be represented.
This assbackwards system means that although the NDP more than doubled its seats, it's politically weaker than it was before the election.
One positive thing is the turn around in Quebec. Now the NDP has more than half its seats from Quebec and they are more progressive and more to the left than English-speaking social democrats. This might force the NDP to the left and this would be good for Canada.
Canadians need to call for electoral reform so that the majority are truly represented. First-past-the-post makes a mockery of democracy as is so painfully obvious today.
The Greens proved to be spoilers giving Harper his majority. The Canadian Greens are not the same as European Greens. They use the same name, but the Canadian version is completely politically stupid. Their motto, "neither left nor right" pretty much says it all. May's hero is Brian Mulroney and that should tell us all we need to know about her. We can thank the Greens for putting Canada under the Harper dictatorship and even more environmental destruction.
Surely Harper is responsible for his own "dictatorship"?
Or has "dictatorship" gained a new meaning while I wasn't looking?
How could more than doubling their seats "weaken" the NDP?
Were they in a coalition before or something? Surely being the "opposition" counts for something even in Canada?
Honestly wishing to be informed,
-matti.
Harper's Conservatives (or more correctly a coalition with the Reform evangelical creationist wackjobs who have taken over) were in a minority government before this election.
This meant that they needed support from the other parties to pass anything. The Cons had more seats in parliament than any other individual party but not more than those other parties (NDP,Liberals,Bloc) combined. Now they do.
Parliament is what leads the country not the Prime Minister. The NDP and the Liberals could have pulled the plug on them at anytime by jointly declaring a non-confidence vote, and finally did when the neutral Speaker of the House found the Conservatives in contempt of parliament, an unprecedented event, by failing to disclose the cost of super jails and F-35 attack jets.
Previously non-confidence votes such as the illegal handing over of Afghan detainees for torture by the Canadian military were avoided by character assassination on the whistleblower and when that did not quite work, proroguing parliament. That means shutting parliament down completely till everything had cooled down. Harper requested this of the Governor General (who is the Queen's representative) more than once. The GG sadly complied.
The contempt of parliament was a deliberate move by Harper because his campaign war chest was full and he used public taxpayer funds to generate US style character assassination attack ads against the Liberal leader Ignatieff well before any campaign was announced or the contempt event was precipitated. Harper wanted supreme power more than anything in the world and now he has it.
Harper will now cut off funding to all political parties - he won't need it as he can use the public purse and the other parties will not be able to match his hate commercials etc. as they won't have the cash.
Harper is now installed as de facto dictator. Unconditional support for Israel (biblical prophecy -as he is a fundamentalist evangelical wackjob as are most of his cabinet and installed officialdom), climate denial, a stacked judiciary to follow and his appointed Senate to pass whatever his parliament wants.
Destroying the Liberal Party was his first objective, Medicare is his next one. He will incrementally whittle it down by withholding funding as he has any organisation that supports abortion anywhere in its service.
Good-bye Canada, the theocratic evangelical fundamentalist corporate state has quietly and cunningly taken over.
Conspiracy theory: Expect an eventual de facto merger with the USA via the Religious Right-wing. This is why bin laden's supposed execution was timed to coincide with the date of Hitler's suicide and the Canadian election. One of those sub-conscious memes that resonate in people's minds to confer stability and righteous authority. If they really had bin Laden I have no doubt it happened earlier, the announcement delayed and the event deliberately staged for maximum effect.
Harper is evil. Comments?
First comment is that that is a crap system to rival the U.S.'s own archaic one if everything you are saying is true!
Second comment is that none of that changes the NDP's gain in power- which is now based in the simple "opposition status" that they enjoy.
Whatever else, they will be the first asked about dissent from the Government's actions, which will place them in prime position when the Government's actions lead to the chucking of the Government through the Conservatives loss of Parliamentary Majority.
Third Comment is a question: Why should funding fro other parties depend on the Government? Does Canada not have a method for private donation to political parties? No political party could ever possibly require more funding than can be generated by tapping the population that put them in at 40-odd% of the Parliament.
Fourth Comment is "Have Faith, Hold Fast". One Election cycle does not tell the tale. This resurgence of the NDP in conjunction with abandonment of the Liberals and the wholesale dropping of the Separatists bodes well for the Body Politic of Canada. I say we don't lose sight of this because of imaginings of the dread that will come from Harper's Majority. Adjust the lense to a longer focus and things seem better.
Thanks,
-matti.
I am not an expert by any means on political systems including Canada's and I expect I have much more to learn. This link may explain things better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Canada
The colour for Conservatives is blue and for Liberals red. NDP is orange.
Going from left wing to right wing, an over-simplification would be that it used to be NDP, Liberal, Conservative, with Liberals in the middle and defining Canada's middle.
You will often hear the terms Blue Liberal and Red Conservative or 'social' Conservative. We are now hard right of centre.
Canada used to be a Liberal country with occasional Conservative governments. Other than the liberals generally being better at reducing or eliminating deficits and a little better with social programs in practice there was not a whole lot of difference between them except in what they said. Liberals would say Liberal things yet do Conservative things and Conservatives would say Conservative things but do Liberal things.
Before though, there was another Party called the Reform party . Alberta based (Republican country!), it was religious right-wing Evangelical fundamentalist. Against the environment, abortion, gays, and women, it spoke of separation, intolerance and general redneck principles and was a minor player avoided by most as fringe and extreme.
Somehow they managed to precipitate a joining with the Conservative Party and then proceeded to hi-jack the party, installing Creationist evangelicals in all the important places. Unlike the Reform bellowing, they were now very quiet on the religion front and control freak Harper in particular has iron control over everyone in the cabinet.
By stealth, trickery and treachery Canada is now run by minority evangelical fundamentalists and swung completely to the hard right.
Harper will be fairly quiet initially except for spending on jails and jets but watch for an incremental erosion of freedom, Medicare and privacy.
The first will be his bundled tough-on-crime bill to lengthen sentences, mandatory minimums, less parole -thus the new jails and an eventual guaranteed overall increase in real crime which I won't bother to explain.
In this bill will be warrantless internet surveillance. Sound familiar?
Back to your questions. The NDP has gained the power to be a speaker on the political scene as the official opposition but an impotent one, other than speech, due to the majority Harper government. It used to be called the "Canadian government" in all documentation but Harper has changed that to the 'Harper Government'.
Does that give you some idea of the megalomania in this cold, empathy lacking, brittle, vengeful, narcissistic individual? I have long suspected that he fits the clinical definition of a psychopath.
Canada had a system whereby the maximum individual contribution is $1,100 and corporations are not individuals.
http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=pol&document=index&dir=lim&lang=e
In addition, political parties get just over $2 from the public treasury for every vote they received in the previous election. This allows competition and for a new party the ability to get off the ground. Harper will cancel that.
Because Canadians generally distrusts politicians, fewer than 1 in 100 individuals donate (tax deductible) to federal parties. Because most of Canada's population is concentrated in a wide ribbon, the West doesn't trust the East and vice versa. Complicating this is that we have provincial governments that are far more independent of the Federal system than in the USA.
There is also Quebec, that has no use for the rest of Canada, except for payments to support it, and considers itself the real Canada. Separation is often used as a means to gain further funds. With 25% of the population, no federal politician can ignore Quebec.
I don't share your optimism with eventually ridding Canada of these Cons. Religious ideologues are well organised and entrenched. They have taken over the USA if you look carefully. Once in, they are like a cancer and they have no practical concerns -faith will override everything. Causing fear and wars is their usual modus operandi and anyone who doesn't support them is unpatriotic, a terrorist sympathiser, anti-semitic etc. It works every time on the ignorant.
Harper cleverly wore everyone down with successive elections (blaming them on the opposition each time) where he achieved only minority power until they stayed away from the polls -he divided the country with his divisive vitriolic politics and then drove up the middle to his coveted victory. We now have a de facto dictator.
All eyes on Jack Clayton of the NDP who hopefully will not succumb to his cancer -otherwise there will be essentially a one party system like the USA with the DEM/REPUB cartel.
Canadians woke up this morning to a country ruled by a right wing majority government...(Authoritarian) Harper can now pass any legislation he wishes without any support from the opposition parties..This is a sad day for Canada..
As for Mr.Layton, congratulations are certainly in order, but here I must remind those not familiar with the Canadian political system that Mr.Layton, although raised to the lofty position of Her Majesty's Official Opposition Leader, has less power today than before this election,,,,,When will people learn?
Thomas Gilbert
Less Parlimentary power, less Governmental power, less Legislative power? Yes.
Less POLITICAL power? No.
I don't care what country one is in, being identified as the "Opposition" means that when the Government screws it up, you are first to be heard complaining and when the Government gets chucked, you are the first in line to take over.
This works even in non-democratic systems.
In 4 -or however many- years when things have gone to hell because of the Conservative Majority, the NDP will have spent four years prominently saying "No!" to every action that led Canada to hell, and the voters will say, "I'll vote for those fellas who were always saying 'No!' to Harper!".
Remember "The Shawshank Redemption?" Andy Dufrense had to crawl through a river of sh!t to come out clean the other side.
Battle's On, Hold Fast.
-matti.
As a Canadian by default (my passport and all the packaging around me tells me this is my 'native land'), I'm mildly concerned by the outcome. To be honest, I say let the stiffest Conservatives have their way: bring the wrack and ruin on sooner than later. It's nature's way that bullies are not satisfied unless they can keep whacking stuff until it breaks. That seems to be Harper's M.O... and even if the opposition gained more ground than this, they would be hectored and jostled incessantly by the conservatives (in the time honored fashion of first world politics) until their 'reforms' and social policies were capsized.
Democracy should BEGIN AFTER the votes have been cast, rather than END. That's why you don't see me at the ballot stations.... it only encourages the stupid buggers, after all.
No country is safe from the pernicious influence of concentrated wealth.
If this keeps up Americans abroad will need to stop claiming to be Canadians.
I'd comment on this, but I'm still ill from thinking of a harpy majority...
Today a client state, tomorrow the 51st state.
The UK still has dibbs on that title.
Nah, Canada will never receive statehood. Think protectorate, like Puerto Rico.
Very bad result, depending on your point of view :). The Bloc was decimated, Duceppe is gone - this is not a bad thing. It seems the country hasn't the stomach anymore for a centrist party (the Liberals) thereby setting up a very polarized Parliament for the next session. A lot of Liberal talent went down to defeat including some prospective future party leadership candidates. If Harper gets stupid the Canadian electorate will do something about it in about 4 years, what goes around comes around and I remember full well what happened to the Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives in 1993.
The Liberals have 4 years to rebuild, they need to use this time wisely. For the poster who asked if someone can serve as the leader of a party without a seat in the House of Commons, the answer is yes. If you lose 70+ seats and/or get decimated like Duceppe & Ignatieff, the answer is no :).
The Canadian Liberal Party needs to die and stay dead.
That was quite the diatribe. I congratulate you and...I also agree with you.
My first thought at waking to this new evil dawn was, I'd be happier with the news that Osama Bin Laden was elected PM and the CIA had executed Harper.
My second thought was that is WAY outrageous
Only to lead to the third thought... Osama never did anything to me.
Harper on the other hand ,,,,well don't get me started
The Liberal party played a losers game that ensured their demise when they tried to shift from the LEFT of the political spectrum to the right.
What had kept them in power many years even with only one party on the right of them A(throught the 50's 60's and 70's barring the Diefenbaker years was them co-opting the CCF and NDP party and adopting their Social policies as Liberal party platforms.
This all changed in the 90's with Chretien and martin. While they still won elections with majorities it was because the reform party split the vote with the Progressive Conservatives.
This is when the Liberals started moving to the right and becoming more business friendly, favoring organizations like NATO and peacemaking rather then peacekeeping and shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. This is when they started buying into Globalization.
This is when the cut their own throats. Yes the sponsorship scandal played a role here but the prime reason they have all but been abandoned as a party is because they tried to out conservative the conservatives on their own turf.
They are kaput unless they get a truly visionary leader who pull them back to the left way to the left and abandons corporatism.
once more taxes proved deadly for those who profess them as the means to finance government
Right. We'll pave the streets with voluntary contributions. Better yet, privatize them so every street is a toll road. Then moneyed aristocrats will be able to cruise the empty streets without having to mingle with the riff-raff AND it will keep the poor in their place.
Brilliant!
We need to figure out how to build political systems that are quite difficult to corrupt by money and power. The weak point in our "democratic" systems that is available to be corrupted are the parties. Capture the leadership of a party, change its internal rules, and solidify control over the party by destroying most of its internal democracy but leaving enough "show" to present as a fig-leaf covering the lack of internal democracy of the party. What madness it is to expect that a political party with almost no internal democracy will respect a country's democracy and people when it gets power, and will not change the rules to solidify its control of the country when it gets a chance (though leaving enough democracy to present as a fig-leaf covering the elitist control).
Would it really have been better if the Harper Conservatives had been held to a minority? The elites with their control of both the Conservatives and the Liberal parties would still have their majority. The Liberals would be able to present themselves as defenders of democracy as they played their games, and the NDP would need to dance with them because of the numbers in parliament. Is it not better that the NDP do not need to be distracted by that dance and can focus more of their energy on opposing the Harper government as they can focus the battle with the elites on one front rather than two.
There are far far more workers with good minds in this country than elites with good minds. In thinking power we can vastly overwhelm them. If collectively we decided that we needed to figure out how to build political systems that could not easily be corrupted by the wealthy, and we put our minds to it we easily have enough intellectual power in the working class to do so. Human ingenuity is our most abundant, powerful and wasted resource. I have no doubt that when we start seriously asking how we can build stable, effective democratic systems that are extremely difficult to be corrupted then we will be surprised at the breadth of possibilities available to us and change will follow.
Progressive parties can be corrupted just as can any other party. I would expect that the elites are working on that. The internal democracy of worker parties (and unions and other worker organizations) needs to be defended.
.
In my dreams, the new Leader of the Opposition is =Naomi Klein=. She is twice as smart as PM Harper, even before she's had her first cup of coffee and gotten both eyes open.
Trylon
Conservatism, its where the money is
Is Canadian Medicare on the chopping block now?
yes among other things we Canadians take for granted like free speech.
Unless you fight to hold them, they might be gone.
Does this mean that they will be gone or that you will fight?
Most of us seem to be missing the point of these results!
Sure Haprer and the Conservatives get Majority Government, but what ELSE has happened?
The Liberals and the Separatists have been abandoned by the People!
Clear, pan-linguistic lines are being drawn, and the first sketch of those lines is a HUGE jump for the NDP.
This is earth-shaking happy news for all those who style themselves "progressives".
But what do I see here?
More of the same myopic dispondency that I have seen ever since the Michael Moores ran away from the Nader-Green Coalition in fear in the Fall of 2000!
An Election is NOT a Revolution!
Do not look for everything to change because of an Election.
Instead look to trends.
The trend in Canada -based on this result- is a mild increase in popularity for the Conservatives and a WILD increase for the NDP accomplished by the casting off of the Liberals and shelving of the Separatists.
This Election shows a MASSIVE coalescing of the Canadian Left toward true unified expression of their -heretofore- heterogenous and dispersed power.
And everyone wants to be sad because the fools that have given Harper his Majority are about to reap the whirlwind on all Canadians!
I say: "Weather the Storm and be ready to Rise!"
-matti.