Let me guess: a minority government as
holding pattern to keep things
moderate until they get their collective acts slightly more together. A
Tory (that's "Conservative Party" for my non-Commonwealth readers)
minority would punish Liberal arrogance, and the Tories couldn't
successfully pass any socially conservative legislation if they had a
bare plurality of seats. A chastened Liberal party would come back and
win a majority in 18 months and would Do Better.
I strongly believe that reasoned compromise and moderation is one of the best ideals of the National Character:
between English and French, between ties to the countries from which we
came and the country we adopted, between free markets and socialism and
yes, between being like and unlike our neighbour to the south. I think
that a Conservative minority allying itself with the Bloc (who would
agree on decentralization and granted more powers to the provinces,
which works given Canada's vast size) and an opposition alliance of the
Liberals and NDP would've been a workable solution and would've given
the Liberals the "time out" that they so richly deserve. At the very least, it would result in Paul Martin's ouster.I also believe that repairing some of the damage to the US/Canada relationship is in order, and I think that the Tories are probably better able to do that than the Grits. We may not necessarily agree with everything they do (my own stance on the Iraq war is that they're invading the wrong country), but as anyone who's made it even part-way to adulthood will tell you: friends can disagree and remain friends. I think we make a pretty good Simpsons to their Flanders.
"Anonymous" also says:
But I can't vote for the Alliance, which is all the current Tories are.
While I find a good chunk of their social agenda repugnant (and I'm sure that for at least some of them, their Canada does not include Accordion Guy), I'm of the "I don't have to like you to work with you" school of thought -- hell, anyone who's been to any of David Janes' "poliblogger" get-tyogethers knows that I'm even of the "I don't have to agree with you to have a friendly beer with you school of thought". They can do their job and keep the government running and the swindling down, and I can do mine, which is making the Internet go. A minority position would forve them to curb their retrograde social enthusiasms. I won't go to their barbecues and they don't have to attend my hot tub parties.
I live in the Trinity-Spadina riding, where the race was between current MP Tony Ianno and the challeneger Olivia Chow. David Watters, the Conservative candidate, is a non-entity in this riding, "non-entity" being defined as "not being able to get more than twice the votes for the Green Party, around whom I can't even sustain a straight face, never mind the environment". Given that I wanted to give the Liberals a time-out and the fact that Olivia had the best shot at usurping Ianno and since she was probably the candidate with whom I could actually buttonhole for a half-hour over coffee (she once tried to recruit me to play accordion at an event she was hosting), I held my nose and voted NDP.
(By the bye, Ianno won, but by just about 1000 votes)
It may have been madness, but there was a method.
One wonders what the Colbinator (who wrote a good piece on why one should vote Tory) and Judy Rebick (who co-wrote a predictably finger-wagging piece on why one should NDP) would think.
(Truth be told, I'd gladly have a beer with Colby, who seems like the sort of fella with whom one could imbibe many fine brews and discuss just about any topic under the sun. On the other hand, I would probably avoid ingesting anything -- even air -- with Judy. It's not from any political disagreements I have with her; it's fear of catching The Shrill.)
A wag at Tucows noted: "The maritime provinces voted to keep getting handouts, and Ontario voted to keep giving handouts to them."
Office phone:
Google Talk:
Personally, I'm glad it turned out how it did, though before I went to bed, the LIberals/NDP actually had a majority. When I woke up, it was down to exactly half the seats.
- Ian
Perhaps the Liberals did need being knocked down a peg or two but not at the cost of allowing extremists in the Conservative party into power. The previous comment is right on the mark. When the right-wingers get to start making long-term judicial appointments, the costs of that time-out for the Liberals increases exponentially. We're all holding our breath here south of the border that we can rid ourselves of the bible-thumpin' moron-in-chief before anything happens to our current batch of Supremes.
Mind, I didn't want a Conservative majority myself; I'm a weak-libertarian/small government conservative myself, and there are too many SoCons for me to want them to be unrestrained. Given the result that we have, I'm hoping the opposition trio can join forces to push through accountability reform (something all three have reasons to want to approve of), and greater changes to responsiveness within the House.
As for Mattmend's comment.... Canada doesn't treat the U.S. well, either. The primary difference is that because the U.S. is by far larger, the impact is greater. A Canadian exporter denied access to the U.S. market (or penalized by duties) is hurt far more as a percentage of his income than (say) HBO is hurt by not being allowed directly into Canadian markets. In general, U.S. behaviour, by the standards of history, has been pretty good. Yes, the U.S. is flawed, and has much room to improve but to paraphrase Churchill, "it is the worst Superpower in the history of Earth.... except for all the others."
Matt
The Bloc in the government is scary. This way we can have a 'legal' sponsorship deal. I mean, if a Quebec company and a PEI company go after the same government contract, which company has an advantage to get the deal if the Bloc has something to say about this. I would find it normal to see more government money flowing into Quebec with a Bloc in the government than with them not in it. Just the thought of having a party that wants to separate from a country ruling over this country should scare everybody.