On election night 2006, the Conservatives fell short of a majority by 32 seats. The Liberals did better than expected, but Paul Martin will not lead the Liberal party into the next election. In his concession speech he announced his intention to have the party arrange for his succession.
The NDP won 11 more seats going to 29, but were shut out again in Saskatchewan.
Some NDP first time victories were oh-so-sweet: Olivia Chow and Peggy Nash in downtown Toronto for a start, Penny Priddy in Surrey, B.C., and Denise Savoie in Victoria.
But no clear winner in 2006 means it’s game on for a 2007 election. The Liberals will try to put a new look on the party with a new face at the top.
It was Stephen Harper who punctured the Bloc Québécois balloon, gathering 24 per cent of the popular vote, and walking off with 10 surprise seats in Quebec. Gilles Duceppe wanted 50 per cent of the Quebec popular vote, and could not increase his score, remaining in the 42 per cent range.
Liberals Ministers — Pierre Pettigrew and Liza Frulla — lost badly in Quebec.
Ontario proved hard to crack for Harper. About one voter in three marked a ballot for his party. The Liberals won one-half of the seats and the popular vote (40 per cent) while the NDP made some nice gains. Overall it was the best outing in the province in the history of the Federal NDP.
The biggest smile of the evening belonged to Preston Manning at the Harper celebration in Calgary. It was his father, one-time Alberta premier Ernest C. Manning who wanted to see a re-alignment of Canadian politics along ideological lines, and wanted to lead a national party of the right. Twenty years later his son Preston Manning created it — the Reform party — and Stephen Harper left the Progressive Conservatives to work for it.
Now Harper, nearly 20 years after that beginning, takes the right-wing project to 24 Sussex Drive having succeeded in partially filling the old Ontario Conservative bottle with Alberta Rye Whiskey.The pressure to establish a left-liberal alliance to counter the Conservatives was applied in the campaign by Buzz Hargrove, and the Think Twice coalition. NDP activists opposed the idea. Layton prefers electoral reform (proportional representation) to electoral arrangements with a Liberal party that leans right in a corporate world.
The Liberal leadership race is likely to dominate the national scene until the next election. The new leader will want to mobilize around social issues to get ready for the next race against the Conservatives.
As the Conservatives took the lead in opinion polls, organizers were careful to stuff socks in the mouths of Conservative candidates who were then led far away from the media. If enough of them spit out the socks, the heat will be on the Conservatives early in the next Parliament. But the Conservatives have the full support of the media and big business.
An important role for the NDP will be to keep the Conservatives from widening the military adventure in Afghanistan.
Nobody won this election. The party that learned the most from the last campaign did win the most seats.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
