Tories win a majority of sorts

By Don Martin
Canwest News Service

Supporters cheer while they wait for Conservative leader and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper at his election night headquarters in Calgary on Tuesday. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

CALGARY - The Calgary convention centre crowd was strangely muted until their leader took the stage, party faithful clearly disappointed at finishing just shy of absolute power.

They needn't fret. The Conservatives have won a majority in political power if not in name.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper finished close to his dream of painting half the Commons seats a dark blue on Tuesday night with about 142 seats, less than a dozen shy of his end-to-dysfunctionality control goal for Parliament.

Riding an unexpected jump in economy-spooked Ontario's support, which gave them six new seats ringing the Liberal's Toronto fortress, the Conservatives are now set to lead the an absolute-power minority, perhaps the strongest in history.

To the relief of campaign-weary Canadians, who voted their displeasure with the lowest voter turnout in history, this result ends the threat of another election for two years or more.

With the Liberals a fading force, losing popular vote in four consecutive elections, and a do-over leadership convention on the horizon for 2009, Harper will have an even weaker Liberal opponent to tackle with even less money to fight back.

His crime and economic agenda can confidently run roughshod over the Liberals, whose defining position is going to be the fetal curl until the Official Opposition gets its act together, which could take years.

There will be grumbles that Harper had his three strikes at elevating the Conservatives into the majority stratosphere and has hit an electoral ceiling of voter support.

There will be people who argue breaking the spirit of his own fixed election laws and squandering $300-million for an election when only about three dozen seats changed hands was a waste of time and effort.

And there's bound to be a backlash against Quebec's fickle election voting behaviour, embracing do-nothing Bloc Quebecois while denying the Conservatives a critical payoff.

That may well be the big aftershock of this vote - how a minuscule arts funding cut and an optional youth sentencing provision could derail the Conservative's cruise-control to a majority, this after the government crafted so many policies and programs to appease Quebec.

The next time the prime minister advocates a Quebec-only benefit or directs great gobs of political payola toward that province, he will face grinding-teeth objections from inside his western base.

But Harper's leadership is obviously secure given the strong results with apparent gains in every other region of the country.

He can, if he wants, take a fourth grasp for a supersized mandate, although given a victory speech that basically echoed the agenda he left behind to force the election, might not be necessary to accomplish his goals.

The discipline of power and Harper's legendary control tendencies will keep any disgruntled MPs with leadership ambitions cowering in the corner until the prime minister decides to leave.

The same cannot be said for Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. He had competition from defeated Green Leader Elizabeth May for the night's biggest loser, but at least May lost a seat she couldn't win and her party's share of the vote went up.

Dion had no such comfort to fall back on after losing 19 seats to finish below what even John Turner posted in 1988. He lost Atlantic heavyweight Robert Thibault and Toronto maverick Garth Turner to the Conservatives, while giving his rivals a toehold on P.E.I. for the first time in more than 30 years.

The third minority in a row opens up multitudes of options as Canada's political parties regroup over the election post-mortems to see if it's finally time to form a coalition of the willing on the left to finally challenge Conservatives settling in for a long run in power.

Dion cannot last, of course. He may try, insisting he's no quitter, but if he refuses to leave voluntarily he will suffer the same mutiny of caucus support experienced by former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day in 2001. At best, he's a marker holding a symbolic leadership until a convention to crown his replacement can be organized. I'm betting he's gone within a month, replaced by interim leader Ralph Goodale.

New Democrat Jack Layton, for his part, can claim better than expected results and will stand pat, waiting for his next deluded run to become prime minister. He was in danger of losing his only Quebec seat, thus getting rid of a wannabe leader Thomas Mulcair, and at this writing had a shocking lead for an Edmonton, where caucus chair Rahim Jaffer was behind at press time.

He also deserves considerable credit for resonating with voters with hard-targeted message on jobs long before the rest of his opponents grasped the ballot box issue.

And so, with another minority the ultimate result of this oddball dirty campaign, the question remains: Has the dysfunctionality of Parliament that prompted this election been resolved - or merely extended?