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Oct
15
Canadians were waking up Wednesday to news the country had elected its third consecutive minority government, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives returning to Ottawa with a strengthened mandate following a national vote Tuesday.
“Canadians have voted to move our country forward and they have done so with confidence,” Harper told a rally in Calgary as supporters celebrated the party’s victory and the end of a tumultuous — and at times rancorous — 37-day campaign.
Do you covet that or what – only 37 days of campaigning?
This post at The Moderate Voice offers more insight on what it means to win a “third consecutive minority government”:
Now understand that in Canada a landslide has a different meaning. There are 4 main parties (Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic and Bloc Quebec). So a landslide is when a party is able to form a majority government with 50% plus one seats in Parliament.
You need 155 seats for a majority, the Conservatives came in with 124 seats so they needed to gain 31 more.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company has already projected that Harper will remain Prime Minister in a minority government. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is the bias in the coverage. Here we had the big SNL parody of the media openly rooting for Obama. In the CBC coverage they are openly for the Liberals and attacking Harper (calling a 20 plus seat gain a ‘major defeat’) and it seems to be no big deal.
Again, having lived in a country ruled by a coalition government of nearly 14 political parties (Israel in the mid-1980s), and reading about Canada with four parties, I again caution that we be careful what we wish for. In our mobile, global world, there is, just as there never has been, no perfect system of electing a government.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:37 am October 15th, 2008 in Canada, Elections, Politics, Voting
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2 Responses to “Canada’s Harper wins in landslide”
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Canadian Politics is so *nods off* EXCITING eh?
That’s why most of us watched the ‘Merkin’ VP Debate instead of our own. Your Political Soap Opera/Mini Series is now going on 3 years and is a hotbed of Iniquity, Romance, and Intrigue.
The real problem for both of our countries is that we are handcuffed with this archaic first-past-the-post system…
the Election is over before I even get to vote and I live in WhatEVERpeg, Manitoba, which is right next to Ontario, Upper Canada!
That is no way to run a modern Democracy and everyone knows it.
Upper Canada is losing it’s grip on the ROC (rest of Canada) so we may all be looking at alternative accomodations in the very near future. Westerners have had enough of the hind teat and may actually walk out and leave Upper and Lower Canada to chew on the carcass.
You know what really troubles me? If we are forced to become part of ‘Mannisota’ or ‘North Datoba’ then we have to start fixing the Merkin Political system which is (without hyperbole) a MILLION times more f&^#%@ up than our system.
Donn, if it means anything, I understand your pain. I do two podcasts and an occasional column for the Canadian progressive website rabble.ca (yeah, the Canadians seems more willing to give me a voice than the home team). Anyway, my podcast buddy from Toronto was bemoaning the same thing last night on our podcast. If Canada had proportional representation, the final count of MPs would have looked more like this:
“The Conservatives would have got 116 seats, Liberals 81, NDP 57, Block Qu 30, and Other 24 seats. This based on the number of seats and the percentage of votes.”
Or as another astute letter writer to the Globe and Mail pointed out:
“So for ever two Tory voters there was a NDP voter. In a room of 10 people 4 would be Tories, 3 Liberals, 2 NDPers and 1 Bloc supporter. In fact in that room the Tories would be a minority.What the neaderthals are proving is that they don’t think that 2.5 million Canadians should have representation in parliament. Harper couldn’t close the deal. The Liberals were weak going into the election, proposing a radically new tax system in the middle of the financial crisis. Harper agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan, he has had to put his ‘National Citizen Coalition’ agenda on the backburner, he took abortion off the table. When he tried to introduce wedge issues into the election, he lost Quebec. In other words he tried to be as Liberal as he could be and he still couldn’t get to a majority. That’s usually considered a failure. Moreover, I will add that the turnout was the most dismal in an election ever. Part of that is no doubt due to the new identification requirements which will hurt most of all student voters. Many students had to bring with them proof of residence and a photo id. Clearly that hurt the NDP more than anyone else. One report I read this morning is that at Dalhousie MOST of the student voters were not allowed to vote because of the requirements. Disgraceful.”