Whew. Ontario, which gave Brian Mulroney his Conservative majority in 1988, refused to throw its weight behind Stephen Harper and his new Conservative Party of Canada. It preferred the other native Ontarian, Paul Martin. With 135 seats the Liberals can expect to hold on to power. In this minority parliament, Stephen Harper will not likely be called upon to form a government.

Political affiliation in Canada used to be simple to understand. Quebec was French, Roman Catholic and voted Liberal. Ontario was English, Anglican and voted Conservative. People in the Maritimes inherited their Liberal or Conservative politics from their parents. Westerners brought their politics with them, from the East, Europe or the U.S. And, in the depression, the prairies home-grew the CCF.

Now, Quebec has its own party, the Bloc, which is mainly outside Montreal, with an important enclave in the poor East End of that glorious city. The Bloc was born in the Constitutional free-for-all Mulroney started over the Meech Lake Accord.

But, after forming the official opposition in 1993, it was built around a campaign to fight the cuts to Unemployment Insurance introduced by Paul Martin in 1995. For nine years it has bird-doggd the Liberals. Yvon Loubier, a farm economist, showed how the Liberals were stealing from the unemployed to reduce the deficit. Gilles Duceppe uncovered the Liberal scheme to buy Quebec support for Canada with its sponsorship program.

The 54 seats won by the Bloc on June 28 are a tribute to the British parliamentary system which Quebec nationalists love as if they had invented it. They used the opposition benches to make themselves the party of the Quebec people. Any hope the Liberals had of maintaining a majority was lost to the Bloc in Quebec before the campaign began.

Winning Quebec is still the key to winning power in Canada. And until the Liberals figure out that the Bloc wins on a social agenda, they are unlikely to supplant the nationalists.

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper began his campaign by slyly stating that you can be a Canadian without a being a Liberal. But it seems if you live in urban Ontario you are likely to vote Liberal.

Jack Layton will be in parliament and he will be joined by caucus mates from Hamilton (one not two), two from Windsor, and Ed Broadbent from Ottawa.

But urban Ontario is now the heartland of the Liberal party.

The NDP is back in Northern Ontario. But it was shut out in its homeland of Saskatchewan, with Dick Proctor losing in Palliser, where the Greens won about 1,000 votes.Somehow, between one a.m. Eastern Time, June 29 and the seven a.m. news that morning, the NDP went from 24 seats to 19 and the best expected election outcome of a Liberal minority dependent on the NDP for support, went out the window.

Hugh Segal, a longtime Tory and a former advisor to Ontario premier Bill Davis who ran a minority government for years in the 1980s, was on CBC morning television explaining how the Liberals could govern: establish a program and find parliamentary partners on an issue-by-issue basis. Because of his past experience, he is was well placed to know.

Conservatives and Liberals agree on joining the U.S. missile defence scheme, he suggested, and could do it together. Liberals and NDP could find common cause on a cities agenda and bring a few other MPs along as well.

The Conservatives scared the Liberals into running a scare campaign. The party that makes its opponents afraid is doing its job. The Conservatives are that party; they have come from nowhere to holding nearly one-third of parliament.While we breathe a sigh of relief they did not do better, it is also time to think about what can be done to stop their progress.

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...