So, as noted here, the Canadian general election results in a somewhat strengthened – but still minority – government by the Conservatives (blue, in the CBC map below).  They’re led by Stephen Harper, who seems to have taken more than one page from the Bush playbook (gov’t is inherently bad, science doesn’t matter, etc.).  The Liberals (red) lost a number of seats, which – if they’re as toothless as they appear to be (again, draw the parallels) – doesn’t strike me as an entirely bad thing. The New Democratic Party (orange), which is somewhat to the left of the Liberals, didn’t get nearly as far as it had hoped but still picked up seats. And Bloc Québécois (light blue) did what Bloc Québécois does, taking most of Quebec. Finally, the biggest story that the Green Party was able to generate was the loss of its leader Elizabeth May in a race to unseat the Conservatice Defence Minister. This results in an electoral map that looks like this:
So what does that all mean? Canada gets pretty much the same government it had before it went through all the trouble of an election. Spending much time on the road in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick last week, there was ample time to listen to talk and news radio. It gave an interesting (if brief) view into daily politics there, where I learned that their conservatives are just as whiny as ours – forever going on about the liberal media to the exclusion of almost everything else (except the occasional anti-tax slogan). The Liberals appear to share one of the worst traits of US Dems – an apparently inherent inability to stand up to conservatives. And the NDP actually reminded me of the UK’s Lib Dems – except with some actual electoral success.  In any event, good luck to Canada.