Candian Broadcasting Company: Canada Votes 2006
I got to admit that the initial news looked bad. Thanks to widespread corruption, Canadian voters had cast the Liberal Party from power and installed the Conservative party.
However, on further glance, I think things are not as bleak as they seem on first glance. In the prior Parliament, the party breakdown looked like this…
Liberals – 133
Conservatives – 98
Bloc Quebecois – 53
New Democrats – 18
Independents – 4
vacancies -2
After this week’s elections, the new party breakdown is…
Conservatives – 124 seats
Liberals – 103
Bloc Quebecois – 51
New Democrats – 29
Independent -1
What is interesting to me is that the two parties that gained the most ground were the Conservatives (but not enough to rule by themselves) and the New Democratic Party (a leftist party, probably not as far as Leftist as the Canadian Greens but still pretty liberal… most folks I’ve talked to compare it to the European socialist parties), and in fact the NDP almost DOUBLED its representation in parliament.
So I think things might be ok. I’ve talked to several Canadian friends (on Vagrantcafe.com), and I think most attribute the Conservative success to the scandals in the Liberal party, not from any change in the people’s political ideology, and that if the Cons try undoing gay marriage or starts buddying up to the US Imperial regime, folks are not going to be happy.
Two more things worth noting…
The Canadian Green Party didn’t get enough votes to get any seats in Parliament but they did get a total of 4.5% of the popular vote which is encouraging since that means close to 25% of the Canadian populace vote for leftist anti-corporate parties – see http://www.greenparty.ca/
Also on the bad news side of the equation, it looks like the one independent candidate is a racist shock jock from Quebec – see http://www.cbc.ca/story/canadavotes2006/national/2006/01/24/independent-arthur060124.html