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.
More Winners and Losers The big winner on Jan. 23 was of course Conservative leader Stephen Harper, who gets the grand prize Ð the job of Prime Minister of Canada. The biggest loser was Paul Martin, who will go down in history as one of the weakest PMs. It is hard to imagine a poorer election campaign than that of the Liberals. Martin was smart to announce that he is stepping down as leader Ð they would have replaced him anyway. A good example of dumb politics was Martin's isolating and ignoring Chretien supporters in Quebec. A number of them went to work for the Tories and helped them get ten seats. Martin's yelling and screaming about Harper may have kept some votes in Ontario, but little anywhere else. It did very little for his stature as Prime Minister. Some other winners and losers? Steven Fletcher, Tory health critic, won handily in Charleswood as predicted in this column. "Star candidate" John Loewen, who left the provincial Tories to run for the Grits, never made much of an impact in the campaign. He was never able to explain why he was running, and the word on the street was that the Liberals pulled their workers out of the riding in the last week and put them in other areas. Fletcher will do a good job on the government side, as he has done in opposition. The biggest winner was Tory Rod Bruinooge, a Metis originally from Thompson, who beat Reg Alcock in Winnipeg South. He only won by 110 votes, but he had lost to the Liberal heavyweight last time by over 6,000. Pompous, arrogant and roundly disliked by the opposition, Alcock had spent a lot of time before the call running around the province promising wads of cash for all types of projects. He also recruited "star candidates" for the Liberals. It is ironic that one of these Ð Tina Keeper Ð won and Reg lost. Alcock bragged in the last week that he would be a big winner and had pulled his workers out and sent them elsewhere. No appointment for Reg; he will have to find a real job. Joy Smith this time beat Liberal patronage guy Terry Duguid by 4,000 votes. Duguid had appeared on TV a few days earlier, claiming he was winning, but he wasn't convincing, even though their area is normally left-leaning, at least provincially. The NDP candidate got less than half of Smith's votes. In another race, it was not a surprise that rancher James Bazan beat 70-year-old Ed Schreyer by a huge margin. The former Governor-General was never really able to explain why he was making a comeback after decades of not seeking election. Ed did make a good run at it, though, attending many all-candidate meetings, but was never able to best the 40-year-old Bazan, who has a stranglehold on the rural vote. The other rural Tories had little trouble racking up easy wins with huge margins as expected, as did the three NDP members in Winnipeg. A huge surprise to The Corner was how Anita Neville hung on to win in South Centre, beating the Conservative by over 3,000 votes. A lot of the area is affluent, like Winnipeg South. Oh well, maybe next time. A previous article mentioned the huge Conservative majorities in Alberta. Most won by 10,000-20,000 votes, with Jason Kenny getting 38,000 more than his nearest opponent. Kenny spent a lot of the campaign in Ottawa working on strategy and appearing on TV. Now we see why. "Landslide Annie" McLellan, the deputy PM who won by 721 votes last time, finally lost to the Tories, this time by over 3,000 votes. She will probably go back to teaching law. There was also one Edmonton seat where the NDP thought they had a chance Ð they didn't. Rahim Jaffer beat Linda Duncan by his usual 5,000 votes. What about the Conservative minority? How long will it last? Stephen Harper will be much different than Joe Clark way back in 1979, when he had a strong minority but decided to rule as if he had a majority. Clark could have made an alliance with the Social Creditors in Quebe but didn't, didn't recall Parliament for months and lost on the gas tax issue. Harper will be far more cautious and will likely negotiate with the other parties to get his legislation through. The hunters, fishermen and farmers should be big winners when the Harper team gets rid of the long-hated gun registry. Harper promised to use the savings to hire more police officers to help solve the crime problem. What a great idea.
