Canadian Elections

The Canadian Federal Elections were held on Oct 14th and resulted in a strengthened minority Conservative government. That means that Stephen Harper will continue as the Prime Minister of Canada. He called the elections based on the belief that he would get a majority government and polls did reflect. However, the global financial meltdown and the resulting bailout package in the US had an effect and caused the Tories’ standing in the polls to slip. However, they did increase the number of seats in Parliament which strengthened their minority government. The other story is that the Liberal Party suffered the worst losses in two decades. The fallout is that the leader of the Liberal Party, Stephane Dion, is stepping down next May. From what I can see, while the winner of an election may have a more appealing agenda than the loser, the winner often benefits from a well run campaign. Conversely, the losing campaign is often not well run. That appears to be the case for Stephane Dion. He has come under a lot of fire for refusing to listening to his internal pollsters and running a bumbling campaign. The other problem for Dion is the widespread perception of him as a weak leader. Think of him as the Canadian version of Michael Dukakis and you’ll get the idea.

Adding to the difficulties for the Liberal Party is the fact that their end of the political spectrum is crowded. There is the NDP (New Democratic Party), the Green Party and Bloc Quebecois. This allows the Conservatives some flexibility in their campaign planning. Still, like any other campaign, they have to run a good campaign.

Attention in Canada has now shifted to the US elections with two weeks to go. A lot of interest up here.