Awesome country that made a big mistake on January 23 or whatever day it was. When The Economist said that Harper can call in election within 2 years and get a Conservative Majority I nearly had a heart attack.
The Economist got the first part right. But a Conservative majority? Not looking terribly likely. Governments usually get a bump in the polls at the start purely because people give them the benefit of the doubt. That hasn't happened at all with this one, as far as I can tell. I've said this all along: Harper's being prime minister is most likely going to remind Canadians why they don't vote Conservative. If Harper tries to do anything that is really conservative, he'll be out on his ass faster than you can say "Liberal majority".
So, we basically have two possible outcomes:
1. Harper doesn't govern in a strongly conservative way. This will result in a larger likelihood of his party staying in power, but it will not result in a strongly conservative government.
2. Harper does govern in a strongly conservative way. The Liberals, Bloc, and NDP will then no-confidence his ass out of government and he'll probably have lost a lot of support in the process.
Either way, Canada hasn't taken any sort of strong conservative tilt. Regardless of what American conservatives would like us to be and would like to think we've become through this election, it's just not happening.
I love that Filibuster Cartoons website that Bono told me about. Especially the beaver that represents Canada.
Filibuster Cartoons isn't the only political cartoon that uses the beaver to represent Canada. Every single Canadian political cartoonist I know of uses the beaver for that, in fact. I'm not 100% where it came from, but wherever it did, it's essentially now the case that the beaver is to Canada what Uncle Sam is to the United States.
Frankly, I like the beaver more.
