[Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: Conservatives win Canadian election

[harry.sifton at sympatico.ca]

Harold spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

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Note from Harold:

I will comment later!
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To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Conservatives win Canadian election
Stephen Harper's party will have to make sure it does not to stray too far from the centre ground, says Anne McIlroy.
Anne McIlroy
Tuesday January 24 2006
The Guardian


Canada's Conservatives won yesterday's general election, but results today showed they will have little room to deviate from their leader's proposals for modest change.

The party, led by Stephen Harper, enjoyed a breakthrough in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec. While it also made inroads in voter-rich Ontario, it won fewer seats nationwide than expected.

Nevertheless, it was a triumph to savour for Mr Harper. Only a few months ago, many Canadians saw the 46-year-old economist as angry and too hungry for power, and suspected he would implement a socially conservative agenda if elected.

"I tell Canadians that we will respect your trust and we will stick to our words," Mr Harper told a gathering of supporters in Calgary.

The cautious vote for change will put him at the head of a minority government. After almost 13 years of Liberal rule, it was a difficult loss for the party to swallow.

The outgoing prime minister, Paul Martin, said he would step down from the Liberal leadership, but insisted the party would remain a force to be reckoned with.

Mr Harper failed to obtain the 155 seats he needed to win a majority of the 308 seats in the House of Commons - meaning opposition parties could bring down the government, and force another election, if they were to unite.

This morning's results put the Conservatives on 124 seats to the Liberals' 103. The Bloc Québécois won 51 seats, while the social democratic NDP took 29. One independent was elected.

The author Michael Ignatief, a star candidate in a Toronto area seat, was elected for the Liberals, as were a number of the party's former cabinet ministers. In the last election - only 18 months ago - Mr Martin won a minority, and his government was brought down in a motion of non-confidence late last year. That prompted the first winter election in a quarter of a century.

Mr Martin took over as prime minister a little over two years ago amid strong public support and high expectations, but never made the transition from successful finance minister to successful leader.

He was nicknamed Mr Dithers and left himself little firm ground on many of the major issues of the campaign. His protestations that Mr Harper would abandon the Kyoto accord on global warming sounded hollow because, for years, his government had done little to curb Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.

The Liberals held a small lead during the first half of the campaign, despite the fact that Mr Harper had dominated the contest with daily pronouncements spelling out what the Conservatives would do on healthcare, childcare and tax cuts.

For the most part, the Liberals reacted to the Conservative proposals - and stayed ahead. But the turning point came during Christmas when the Royal Canadian Mounted police said they were investigating whether the government had leaked details of an important financial announcement before the election was called.

It was a reminder to voters of a previous Liberal scandal, in which millions of dollars of government money went to advertising firms that were supposed to boost the federal government's presence in Quebec. Many of the firms did very little for the money, funneling it back to the Liberal party.

The announcement of the investigation came as voters were reassessing Mr Harper after he had spent the first part of the campaign redefining himself as someone with policies that would lead to incremental, rather than dramatic change. He promised increased military spending, small tax breaks and modest increases in government spending.

But his election may be bad news for gay couples in Canada, who can currently legally marry. He has promised a free vote on the issue in the Commons.

It will also be disappointing for advocates of a new national daycare programme. The Liberals and the provinces had been working towards one - but Mr Harper said he would prefer to give parents a tax break.

He also said he would review an historic agreement with Canada's aboriginal people to improve living conditions on the desperately poor reserves across the country.

In the past, Mr Harper has expressed more radical rightwing views, and once said: "Canada is a northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term."

But Canada's frosty relationship with Washington could improve with the Conservatives in power, and Mr Harper had previously said he would reconsider formal participation in the US missile defence programme.

His party is a merger of the populist and socially conservative Canadian Alliance and the more mainstream Progressive Conservatives, a party that went from forming a majority government to having two seats in the Commons after the 1993 election following Brian Mulroney's resignation as the prime minister and party leader.

The Liberals have run the country for roughly 70 of the last 100 years. If Mr Harper wants to hold on to power, he will have to continue to show the discipline that kept his campaign firmly at the centre of the political spectrum.

If he veers too far to the right - if, for example, his party tries to crack down on abortion rights - he may find himself back in opposition.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited