MSNBC: Canada’s next PM: moderate or conservative? — Country waits to see direction Stephen Harper will lead government

MSNBC: Canada’s Conservative Party wins election — Victory pushes Canada to the right for the first time in nearly 13 years

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.