Canada election watch

[Feilan]

Please tell me however, how can getting one's party established as the official opposition as opposed to being number 3 or worse in all previous races be seen as a complete defeat? Is there not some form of victory to be celebrated this evening?

in my humble and admittedly late night sauced opinion - no.

Harper has won a serious - superserial - majority. There's no stopping that kitten eating fucker now. He has what is known in Canadian parliamentary parlence as DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS for four/five unstoppable years. He stops debate in the house when he wants to. He calls votes when he wants to. His troop votes according to dictate. We are doomed. For the next four years we will be doomed without relent. He is creaming himself right now. He can taste his revenge.

Plus what Jeff said about a major red bull boost for the cause of sovereignty in Quebec. Jeezus.

One smoke left.

I'd love to be happy for Uncle Jack - I really would, but facing down a Harper MAJORITY - his gains add up to a thawing dog turd in the real world. Much as it pains me to say so - that's how we roll.

Majority governments are the death knell.

[Project Willow]

Thanks for that Feilan. Well, if it helps any, I was yelling at the numbers all night hoping for a minority for the Conservatives. Ah well.

[Feilan]

。。。Well, if it helps any, I was yelling at the numbers all night hoping for a minority for the Conservatives. Ah well.

it does help. it really does. thank you for yelling at the numbers. i was yelling at the numbers too. fuck of a lot of good that did us, eh?

sigh - chin up.

[Jeff]

Totals/Totals without Quebec

CON 167/161
NDP 102/44
LIB 34/27
GRN 1/1

The Conservatives are the party of English Canada. How motivated do you expect Harper will be to accommodate Quebec, when its departure would help Conservative math to govern what's left of the country indefinitely?

Quebec took un beau risque on renewing Canada.

Ontario Liberals voted strategically. For the Conservatives.

[lupercal]

Totals/Totals without Quebec

CON 167/161
NDP 102/44
LIB 34/27
GRN 1/1

The Conservatives are the party of English Canada. How motivated do you expect Harper will be to accommodate Quebec, when its departure would help Conservative math to govern what's left of the country indefinitely?

Quebec took un beau risque on renewing Canada.

Ontario Liberals voted strategically. For the Conservatives.

Those numbers are striking, you bet. But renewing Canada, qu'est-ce que c'est (not familiar with the term sorry), do you mean by not seceding and was that an option in this election?

Canada's Conservatives secure crucial majority
Latest update: 03/05/2011

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ruling Conservatives swept to victory in Monday's federal election, winning a majority in Parliament. Harper is now the third-longest serving Conservative prime minister since the Second World War. By News Wires (text)

REUTERS - Prime Minister Stephen Harper scored a goal on Monday that had long eluded him, leading the Conservatives to the majority government he had failed to obtain in the last three elections.

Using a campaign strategy that reflected his governing style and personality, Harper’s message to voters was that Canada needed a stable Conservative government to ensure economic recovery and low taxes.

After losing the 2004 election to the Liberals, Harper led the Conservatives to victory in 2006 and 2008, but emerged from those wins with minority governments that needed the support of at least one opposition party to stay in power.

Harper, who turned 52 during the campaign and is an economist by training, is the third-longest serving Conservative prime minister since World War Two. He is not required to call another election until 2015.

He maintains strict control over his government to try to avoid negative press, and he is known to have an aloof public personality. His five-week campaign tour around Canada seemed a reflection of this. The Conservatives’ campaign allowed only limited media access and audience members had to register in advance to attend rallies.

The campaign protected front-runner Harper from the gaffes of the past elections that fueled voter fears he had a hidden right-wing social agenda that he would enact with a majority government.

He rejected criticism late in the campaign that he had ignored the surprise surge of New Democratic Party, who are traditionally election also-rans but ended up eclipsing the Liberals to emerge as a serious election foe.

Harper faces a Parliament far different than before the campaign. The left-of-center NDP is now the official opposition, the centrist Liberals reduced to an historic low and Bloc Quebecois, which advocates independent for Quebec, all but eliminated.

Western conservative

Harper has an instinctive distrust of big government and red ink. During the 2008 election campaign he scoffed at the idea of a big economic crash or recession.

But he turned with other world leaders to Keynesian economics to dig out of the recession, running the biggest budget deficit, in absolute dollar terms, in Canadian history.

Harper cut his political teeth in the Western province of Alberta, which long felt excluded from the traditional power centers in the east. He rose to prominence in the 1990s as a legislator for the right-of-center Reform Party, which campaigned under the slogan “The West wants in.”

Harper quickly became frustrated and returned to Alberta, where he urged that the province erect a firewall to prevent interference from the federal government. In 1997, he said Canada was a “welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

http://www.france24.com/en/20110503-can ... ons-harper

[Jeff]

Those numbers are striking, you bet. But renewing Canada, qu'est-ce que c'est (not familiar with the term sorry), do you mean by not seceding and was that an option in this election?

Layton spoke the unmentionable truth that after 30 years, Quebec is still not a signatory to the constitution and that Canada needs to recommit to a process of correcting that. Quebeckers responded to this, and to the shared values of the NDP, by one of their generational demonstrations of collective will. The hope of that is now, at best, deferred four more years. I don't know that Canada has that much time.

[Canadian_watcher]

When I went to bed last night I had to force myself not to think about it. I have a trick I do.. anyway... it worked and I fell asleep more quickly than I have been able to in weeks.

I kind of already knew that when I woke up this morning I'd have a decision to make and that is whether to become radical or whether to check out completely. Live as those mindless manicure women do but in an earthier version.

Just paint, it said to me. (The cosmos, that is.)

So for a while I'm going to listen. My heart is not broken but I can feel the despair sitting on it. I have my first juried show tonight - we'll see if I make it in to round two. cross your fingers for me.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas - starting up an internet radio news show for THE OTHER 60%.. or a movement for the other 60%... or .. ANYTHING... I'm in. I think. We'll see how just painting goes for a while.

[Jeff]

Just paint, it said to me. (The cosmos, that is.)

Wise to listen, then.

It's going to be a long four years, and we can't let them all be as intense for us as the last four weeks.

Another way to look at this: the urban vote beyond the prairies (with the exception of Edmonton), and the backward bits tacked onto Toronto in the Harris amalgamation horror, is now overwhelmingly New Democrat. That's perhaps a more optimistic read of the division than language.

And I'm trying this on:

Quebec is to be thanked for propelling the NDP forward

By Gary Engler, May 3, 2011

Well that election can be added to the list of strange things about our country.

On Monday night the sovereigntists tried to save Canada, but Toronto abandoned it.

And Canada's socialist party had its best showing ever on the night Canada's most right-wing prime minister finally got his majority.

While Québec did its best to prevent Stephen Harper from getting his majority, the GTA gave the Conservatives all the extra seats it needed. Without the increase of 19 seats in the Greater Toronto Area, the Conservatives would have once again fallen short of a majority. Instead they won in 166 ridings, with 155 needed for a majority.

...

Thanks to Québec we have the largest contingent of social democratic MPs in Canadian history. Thanks to Québec we have hope once again that the Common Good may eventually triumph over the Greedy Individual.

We owe a special great gob of gratitude to the sovereigntists who abandoned the Bloc and voted NDP. They may have saved the progressive tradition in Canada.

...

For those of us who believe in economic and social democracy Monday night's election offers a reason to hope.

We have witnessed a fundamental realignment of Canada politics. There's been a shift to the left, after years of drifting to the right.

...

[Canadian_watcher]

And Stephen Lewis was just on CBC .. he reminded us that the NDP has something like 44 women going to Parliament.. so that's a plus.

okay.. painting.

[JackRiddler]

And Stephen Lewis was just on CBC .. he reminded us that the NDP has something like 44 women going to Parliament.. so that's a plus.

okay.. painting.

Is your avatar one of your own paintings? It's beautiful and I've been admiring it. Deadhead!

[Canadian_watcher]

Jack - yep! I do Day of the Dead inspired pieces as well as large scale florals in oil. thanks!

--IGNATIEFF is resigning. That is probably good.

[crikkett]

Is your avatar one of your own paintings? It's beautiful and I've been admiring it. Deadhead!

I agree with JackRiddler - Your avatar is very attractive, C_W

I'm sorry that Canada's under conservative rule.

[Feilan]

It's going to be a long four years, and we can't let them all be as intense for us as the last four weeks.

Another way to look at this: the urban vote beyond the prairies (with the exception of Edmonton), and the backward bits tacked onto Toronto in the Harris amalgamation horror, is now overwhelmingly New Democrat. That's perhaps a more optimistic read of the division than language.

And I'm trying this on:

Quebec is to be thanked for propelling the NDP forward

By Gary Engler, May 3, 2011

Well that election can be added to the list of strange things about our country.

On Monday night the sovereigntists tried to save Canada, but Toronto abandoned it.

...

Gary Engler and I seem to be sharing a brain this morning, up to a point ... my version is quite a bit darker. He's absolutely right about Quebec's heroic effort in this epic electoral FAIL, and it is the ironic icing on our freshly baked 17 layer irony cake. Even when they were voting Bloc they were saving our asses by withholding their vote from YOU_KNOW_WHO. The Bloc may be dead but the likelihood that the call for sovereignty may yet resurrect, more potent and alive than it has been since Levesque's time, casts a long dark shadow on the future. The fact that, as Jeff points out, Steve has every reason not to give a rat's arse - indeed - to show them the door - is the shite icing on the humungous cow pie we'll all be lunching on for four years that will feel like four hundred. As you say, Jeff - IF we last that long. BIG IF.

The rest of Canada - including Quebec and excluding Alberta - has more reason than ever to despise Toronto. If I had the stomach for a real thorough autopsy (which I don't) I'd be looking at a map and the numbers around the vortex that ate hope yesterday and shat out the bones this morning.

Laying out the entrails isn't worth the time it would take because first past the post accounting procedures will forever muddy the waters. The cold hard fact is Harper now has a license to care even less about what anyone else thinks. He can now fashion himself after a giant lump of ice cold concrete refusal to be accountable to Canadians on any score and he can laugh all the while and say he's got a mandate to do it. The fate of the nation is now his own personal plaything. I'm seeing a new t-shirt slogan ... "Everytime a Canadian votes for a Harper majority, Steve kills a kitten."

Because there is now no escaping the event horizon of this black hole - we must, perforce, deal. C_W's better angels tell her to paint. Mine are all hung over and sour as hell. They're not saying anything. Honey says we'll have to turn off the radio for a while, a loooooooooong while, to preserve our sanity. What exactly will the lumpen ghoul do with absolute power? The suspense was the only thing keeping us alive. Hold on tight. We're about to see all the snakes in his head GET. IT. ON. There will be no debate - it will just happen TO us - by decree. Fuck you very much Ford nation - I really really really hope you choke on it.

[Jeff]

All that's restraining Harper now is his political calculus, and that may be enough to provide impulse control. Anyway, that's the best I got.

As for the Liberals, a centrist party that stands for nothing in particular is a hard sell once it falls to third place. Ignatieff had his Lloyd George moment.

[norton ash]

Little dream... get Canadians to watch question period, and use opposition to announce and explain issues and opportunities that call for mass political action.

Damn, I just heard the still, small sad trombone within...