Musings on Greenwood

Canada’s federal election is now history. The NDP is the Official Opposition, the Conservatives have earned a majority and the Liberals have stumbled badly into third place.

Jack Layton’s final seat count is about where I expected it to be. I thought the Tories would end up with about 20 fewer seats while the Liberals would get 20 more seats.

I predicted the NDP as Official Opposition and I was right. I predicted a weakened Conservative minority…I was wrong.

I remain a conservative who is no fan of Stephen Harper and I take back none of my criticisms of his five years in office. I believe the economy over the next four years will savage his government.

BUT!

The people have spoken. Harper has earned his majority. He has a right to govern.

I have been disgusted by the reaction from people on the Left to his majority. My Facebook feed has been flooded with status updates from my more liberal and socialist chums about how they’re ashamed to be Canadian, they don’t recognize their country anymore or pondering which country they should move to.

This is a sad indictment of them, not Canada.

First, for all the anti-democratic accusations Harper has thrown at him, I can’t think of a more undemocratic impulse than hating your country because your fellow citizens elected someone you disagree with. That’s how free elections work.

Second, if you don’t think Harper should be Prime Minister, then go build a better alternative rather than complaining that everyone else got it wrong. Give them something to vote for.

Some people are shocked to their tiny cores that Harper has been re-elected after having been found in contempt of Parliament.

I must admit, it’s disconcerting that this didn’t matter more to voters but let’s not forget that the Liberals were re-elected in 2004 after the Sponsorship Scandal broke and the party’s connections to organized crime were exposed.

The Tories didn’t bitch about how much they hated Canada or the stupidity of Canadians. They went to work trying to replace the government.

I was hoping for another Conservative minority so Harper would be replaced as Tory leader. I didn’t get what I want but I’m pretty sure the sky isn’t going to fall and I wish Harper the best of luck over the next four years.

He’s going to need it.

As for the whiners out there; grow up.

How wafer-thin is your patriotism that you would hold your country in contempt for the results of a free election?

And if your love for Canada is that fickle, maybe that partially explains why your parties flopped last night and Harper now has a majority.

You don’t have to like Harper but his re-election is an indictment of his opponents whom you voted for. Voters rejected them and chose Harper. The snooty, condescending arrogance of the Left will do nothing to endear them to voters.

Please, spare me the lectures about electoral reform. I heard no such lectures from the Liberals in the 1990s as they rolled up massive majorities with 38% of the vote.

On a different note, here’s a big shout out to the NDP for delivering Quebec from that separatist menace. The Bloc Quebecois has been wiped off the map but here’s a word of warning:

Layton would do well to chat with Mario Dumont of the ADQ. He can inform Jack on just how quickly the Quebecois can shift their votes. The NDP made history last night but they shouldn’t be thinking those seats are now permanently their own.

The NDP as Official Opposition will be interesting. Layton now has a pile of MPs in office who never imagined they would win five weeks ago. It will probably resemble Preston Manning’s first term in Ottawa after 1993 when he had to put out fires every week because of something stupid uttered by one of his backbenchers.

Layton has four years to prepare the NDP for power, recruit good candidates, develop sound policies and weed out the nuts in his party.

Had he somehow won power last night, the party would have disintegrated under the weight of government. They weren’t ready but they now have four years to prepare.

As for the Liberals, the Trudeau-era chickens have now completely come home to roost. You’re getting a good look at the true strength of that party in Canada. The legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau dismantled the once mighty Big Red Machine and turned it into a rump.

Their Quebec base is long gone, the party is bankrupt and visionless. It’s also leaderless since Ignatieff lost his own seat last night. This night has been coming for a long time regardless of who was leading the Liberals. They are a national party no more.

I’ve documented this frequently on this blog. The Chretien majorities were flukes due to a divided political right. The sooner the Liberals accept this, the faster they can change.

The few but faithful Liberal supporters must stop looking for the massiah who will lead them back to power and start rebuilding from the bottom up. They also need to take the long view. They won’t be back in power for a while.

It took the Conservative movement in Canada 13 years after 1993 to assemble a team the public felt it could trust with government. The Liberals are looking at that type of long journey.

The party isn’t dead. It’s just much less than it was 50 years ago. Any political observer has known this to be true for ages. It’s now finally clear to the Liberal Party and its supporters.

A change of leaders won’t fix the problem by itself. Ignatieff didn’t run a bad campaign. The whole party needs an overhaul because the days of it winning majorities by default are long gone.

A big shout out to Elizabeth May for getting elected. The Green Party now has an elected MP, the first in history.

It was a very historic night and I’m proud that I got to anchor the coverage of the results for my radio station. The Canadian people have shaken things up; Conservative majority, NDP in second, Bloc wiped off the map and the Green Party wins its first seat.

Indeed, democracy is a beautiful thing. Canadian greatness will do nothing but grow over the next four years and continue long after Harper has left the political scene.

For those who think otherwise; you’re the reason he now has a majority.

Ethan Rabidoux