WE can only hope its a minority. I'm in a pickle. I disagree with the tenor, tone, policies and face of Stephen Harper - but I do respect the legacy of Toryism and there are vestiges of that hiding behind the curtains and the weight of that history kind of keeps Harper and the party from becoming the Canadian branch of the Republican party - we are after all, Canada, and our conservatives are a different breed, just one that has a lot of identity confusion right now.
That's pretty much where I've been the last few elections. My hope is that a few minority governments in a row might finally convince the Conservatives that a socially conservative message will never win them a majority, and they'll decide to abandon that agenda in favour of actually having a chance at making some sort of difference economically. Alas, it appears now that it will take at least one more minority government for them to get the message.
Where are the Red Tories when you need them?
Dion's doing a fine enough job with his Green Shift, of making himself into a single-issue candidate, that our Good Buddy Steve
doesn't have to do anything...
... I liked Ignatieff for the job...
So, we'll need a green smilie and affectionate nickname for Dion then. How about Green Shaft Dion
? And yes, the spelling of "Shift/Shaft" was intentional.
I want to be careful with this, because I've gotten slammed in the past on the theme. Anyhow, does the matter of Quebec independence play any role in the elections?
The biggest role these days is that the Bloc Quebecois gets a lot of the seats from Quebec, which means the other national parties can't expect to get a majority by appealing to Quebec. This has the effect of enhancing Ontario's power in the election, as it's the largest block of seats available, and if one party doesn't win a large majority of these seats, we're almost certain to have a minority government again. The only real question is if it will be minority Conservative or Liberal.
Take a look at the results for last time at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2006#Results_by_province
The BQ got 51 of 75 seats in Quebec. If they had gone Liberal instead, this would have made the Liberals the government. We could play around with other scenarios to see how different breakdowns of the numbers would produce other balances of power, but it's clear that the BQ plays a major spoiler role in Federal politics.
It's interesting to note the very close breakdown of the other Quebec ridings between Conservative and Liberal, as well as the close results in Ontario. Until one of them can break this close-to-a-tie situation, we'll have minority governments for the foreseeable future.
