Truemors
The Canadian Election is over, after 37 hectic days, and Stephen Harper's Conservative government is back in power...with a minority. What's that old saying, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'?
So what did the Election in Canada change?
A whopping 17 new seats for the Conservatives, which they basically exchanged with the Liberals. Very little changed for the NDP, the Greens remain without a voice in parliament and the Bloc Quebecois lost one whole seat.
The Conservative leader came just 10 or 12 votes short of a majority in the 308-seat Parliament but both he and Liberal opposition leader Stephane Dion reached out in recognizing the seriousness of the economic challenges facing Canada.
What went wrong for the Liberals?
The biggest contender going up against Harper's reigning Conservatives was Stephan Dion's liberals, but many people think he lost the race when he just couldn't sell his green shift platform.
Even Liberal candidate Keith Milligan, who lost to the conservatives in PEI, which is typically a Liberal stronghold, pretty much blamed Dion's green shift for the lack of trust from voters:
"That really scares people," he said."No matter how you try to explain it, or no matter how good it could have been, it just wasn't going to be sold."
What's next for Dion? Word is he will try and hang on to his leadership of the Liberal party, but it may be up in the air at this point:
Liberal MP and former party leadership hopeful Bob Rae isn't suggesting Stephane Dion is on the way out after Tuesday's devastating loss, but he isn't ruling it out either.After running an election campaign centred largely on an unpopular carbon tax during a time of economic uncertainty, musings about the Liberal leader's future began as soon as the polls started to lean towards a Conservative win.
There is lots of commentary on the elections, unfortunately most of it is from paid columnists. Not a whole lot of blog action going on, though the twitter streams and other social networking sites are quite active:
"This was a federal election that was lost, not won. Neither of our parties can be fully satisfied with the results ... neither proved up to the challenge."- - - -
"The fact that Mr Harper was restricted to another minority government, albeit a marginally stronger one, means that this campaign can only be viewed as a personal defeat."
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"(Dion) failed miserably ... Mr. Dion should gracefully step aside and allow the next leader to be selected with minimal acrimony."
Of course, all this assumes you know who Stephen Harper is, or any of the other leaders:
Well, you've got me beat. I didn't know Stephen Harper till a quick Google told me. I've always felt odd that everybody knows whats going on in America, but we ourselves barely know about our elections, and know even less about other countries.
Meanwhile, check out our NowPublic results story here, by Staffer Tina Kells:
Track real-time comments about the election results in Canada, or search results by candidate, riding or province, at the Election Results page from Elections Canada.
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