In all the (quite justifiable) euphoria over OBL plus my own patriotic fervour and obsession with chocolate a quite significant political event has slipped slightly below the radar.
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have just won a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliamentary election and therefore, after nearly five years of leading a minority government constantly at the mercy of votes of no confidence from other parties, he will be Prime Minister with a good working majority and beholden to nobody else except his own supporters.
Strangely enough very few people expect to see massive policy changes or initiatives because, despite lacking an overall majority, Harper has already transformed the Canadian political and economic landscape as the BBC, in a surprisingly honest assessment , has been forced to admit.
Analysts say the prime minister has slowly nudged the country further to the right during his five-year tenure.
He has lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoided signing climate change legislation and become a stark advocate of Arctic sovereignty.
He has also increased military spending and extended Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan.
He campaigned on his record of economic management. Since Canada has come out of the recession with one of the strongest and healthiest economies of the G7 he was able to make a very effective case. However he promised to focus on lowering taxes even further and reducing the deficit.
Canadians must have been impressed because the Conservatives made deep inroads into metropolitan Canada, especially Toronto which has for many years been a Liberal Party stronghold.
Ezra Levant, a conservative commentator for the Sun News Network, says the switch of support of visible minorities and new immigrants from the Liberals to the Conservatives is a significant demographic change.
“There’s this whole other media in Canada, ethnic newspapers, TV and radio stations in other languages that our parliamentary media is just not plugged into. In those media battlefields, the conservative brand is dominant,” says Mr Levant.
Interesting. That certainly goes against the mantra being constantly pimped by our “betters” in the media and academe. Maybe there’s a lesson there for all those GOP “consultants” and “strategists” being quoted on Politico…
Indeed the Liberals, soft left, corruption prone and buttressed by a compliant media, like the US Democrats, were one of the biggest losers. For nearly a hundred years the dominating force in Federal politics either in government or as the official opposition the party is now reduced to a rump, alongside the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
The BQ had nearly 50 seats in the previous parliament – now they will be lucky to have 4. Most of their seats were captured by the socialist NDP, which, with gains in other areas now becomes the official opposition. Jack Layton, a rather colourful figure, has pushed the party towards a classic rainbows and unicorns platform of high taxes, increased welfare and radical climate change legislation so naturally you will find him being heavily oversold by the US media plus the BBC and The Guardian, despite the “massage parlour” incident from his past.
For some reason the predominantly liberal left Canadian media went John Edwards on this and buried it until Sun TV (a newish channel labelled the “Fox of the North” by the great and the good) brought it up in the final days of the campaign.
Harper is pro Israel, treats a mainly critical media with contempt and is quite a reasonable rock keyboards man. He holds strong social conservative views but in the past has been opposed to those Conservative Party members who wanted to push the party into socially conservative positions. He prefers to be seen as a fiscal conservative, strong on national security and extremely suspicious of the United Nations.
I’ll drink to that.
So, I imagine, would a certain other person from the northern end of the continent….
