The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Election Winners and Losers As in every election there are winners and losers. The difference in a Canadian campaign compared to that of the Americans is that second place carries the honoured position of opposition, the official opposition that is. What about some of the features of this winter campaign? Every election is different, and any party that forgets this has a serious problem. The Liberals, regardless of their reputation as masters of election strategy, tried to run the 2004 campaign all over again, taking for granted that the Conservatives would not learn anything from their mistakes. Nothing could have been farther from reality. Stephen Harper came out of the blocks early, announcing his policies daily, and showing his reasonableness to the voting public. This had the opposition reacting daily to the announcements. The Liberals dithered, having already announced a number of their policies the week before the election was called Ð giving away more and more money, and announced few new policies until after Christmas. Not a good idea. They were of course sandbagged by the insider trading investigation, which just showed more Liberal scandals to the voter, giving a move to a "time for a change" sentiment. What a lot of people forget though is that Canadian elections are a national campaign by the parties and 308 contests in the ridings Ð not a vote for leaders like the American Presidential election. All regions in the country are quite different. The national campaigns, though, are very important for most local campaigns. The general rule is that your leader gets you a lot of your votes, or loses them. When well down in the polls after Christmas, Martin spent most of his time attacking Harper and visiting ridings the Liberals have held for years, usually with large majorities Ð a sure sign that a number of his incumbent candidates were in trouble. Harper spent most of his time in ridings held by Liberals. Quebec was a major surprise to most observers. Every commentator said early in the campaign that the Tories would do poorly and gain no support, but after Christmas they vaunted past the Liberals to become a major threat to both the Liberals and the Bloc. Is this really a surprise? If we look at history, one can conclude that Quebeckers, like a lot of others, like to be on the winning side. At least the Quebeckers that like federalism that is, and Harper gave them the option of deserting the Liberals and not having to vote for the Bloc. He won an astonishing 10 seats, and held the Bloc to 51 and the Liberals to eight. This will give him a good choice of cabinet ministers from Quebec. The Tories didn't do as well in Ontario as many pundits had predicted. One "expert" claimed they would get 55 or more and the Liberals would be fighting it out with the Bloc for second place. But they did get enough to put them in first place. Harper did very well in the West with 48 seats in the Prairies and well over half the votes, thanks to huge majorities in Alberta, where they took every seat. With only 124 members, the Harper team has a slim minority. If they keep their promises and govern sensibly, they could be rewarded next time with a majority, as was Diefenbaker in 1958. What about some individual winners and losers? In Churchill, Liberal "star candidate" Tina Keeper got out enough of the native vote to win thanks to the two NDP candidates splitting the vote. Keeper had 40.7 per cent and the NDP's Niki Ashton and New Democrat-turned-independent Bev Desjarlais combined had 45.6 per cent. It is obvious that if Bev hadn't run, Ashton would be the MP. Really they can blame Jack Layton for being so rigid on the gay marriage issue and forcing Bev to withdraw from the party. She has been a good MP for the riding and should have been re-nominated. It was a shocker that Gary Merasty beat my favourite MP, Jeremy Harrison, in the Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River Riding thanks to a poor showing by the NDP candidate. Jeremy, who has been an excellent member for the riding, will hopefully get a senior position in Harper's PMO and will run again next time. More winners and losers to follow. Stay tuned.
