This will be VanRamblings’ final posting on Decision Canada. In the coming days, the Decision Canada button above will transform to Canada, as VanRamblings will continue to comment on the Canadian political scene.
In the political realm, VanRamblings will return to, and increase, coverage of local Vancouver and Greater Vancouver Regional / Lower Mainland politics, as well as British Columbia politics leading up to the next provincial election on May 17, 2005. Otherwise, over the course of the summer, VanRamblings will refine our publishing schedule, introducing a weekly New On DVD feature this Thursday, while maintaining the Tech Tuesday feature and Saturday night’s Unbelievable Truth badinage feature.
Harper Raises Possibility Of Stepping Down

Down for the count?

Late last night, in a story published on Calgary’s CFCN CTV website, Conservative leader Stephen Harper suggested that he is considering the possibility of stepping aside, after leading his party through a disappointing election campaign. This follows on the heels of an earlier Globe and Mail story suggesting Harper was “mulling over” his future.
VanRamblings has felt for some time now — dating back two weeks just subsequent to the live television campaign debate — that Mr. Harper seemed ill at ease, out of sorts. We have wondered to ourselves as to whether the Tory leader wasn’t suffering from some sort of dissociative disorder, a pervasive sense of melancholy, impairing his ability to function.
In the first two weeks of the federal election campaign, Mr. Harper was voluble, aggressive (in the most positive sense), directed and seemed eager, always, to speak with the media, in order to communicate directly to Canadians. In the final two weeks of the election campaign, though, the Conservative leader appeared almost to be in hiding, was rarely available to the press, as he took days off at a time, staying almost hermetically sealed inside his political bubble and speaking only to groups of supporters.
All the hyperbole published on VanRamblings about Mr. Harper and the ‘new’ Conservative Party aside (we’re hardly unaware that the attacks on Mr. Harper and the Tories were often visceral), we have felt these past almost three weeks that Mr. Harper seemed to be in some sort of trouble psychologically and emotionally.
Gone were the ready smiles, replaced by bizarre attacks on the issue of child pornography directed at opposition leaders. Gone was the energy that defined not only the Conservative campaign, but the campaign itself, in its early weeks, replaced by the braggadocio talk of a Tory majority. With each misstep by a Tory social conservative, from Cheryl Gallant’s ravings on abortion to Randy White’s musings on invocation of the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause, Mr. Harper seemed more and more deflated.
And now, Mr. Harper is pondering resignation from his post as Tory leader? Where has Mr. Harper’s fight gone? Is the Conservative leader honestly suggesting that he will not lead the opposition party in the 38th Parliament?
Commentary From Various Quarters
Perhaps the most incisive commentary VanRamblings read in the period just following the posting of election night results appeared in the Toronto Star, in Thomas Walkom’s column …

Martin came to the prime minister’s office six months ago like the hero of a classic Greek tragedy. Successful, popular, powerful, he seemed blessed … he was a man who talked of vision but lacked one, who lauded ideas but who, in the end, had none to offer. He was the classic emperor with no clothes. As finance minister he had been self-assured. But as PM, he was too often an empty vessel, echoing platitudes.
For 11 years and through three elections, the Liberals played a cruel hoax on this country. At election time, they campaigned to the left. They promised to right the wrongs inflicted by the Conservatives of Brian Mulroney. They vowed to protect social programmes from the depredations of Preston Manning’s Reform Party and Stockwell Day’s Canadian Alliance. And then, once elected, they stole the ideas of the parties they claimed to oppose and governed to the right. They were cunningly hypocritical. And finally, people caught on.
(As for Stephen) Harper, he is smart and serious. He does have ideas. But he’s a radical in Canadian terms who would devolve power to the provinces and who would dismantle the protective state. While he tried to play that down during the election campaign, enough voters figured him out to deny his party power.
As for his new Conservatives, they are not new at all. Rather they are a hoary, old bunch — a coalition of convenience, dominated by hard-edged Republican clones and sprinkled with old-time Mulroney fat cats. Their economic ideas are pre-1914, their social ideas pre-Cambrian. Eventually, the voters figured out that, too.

Of course, there is more punditry and commentary. National Post columnist Colby Cosh (quickly becoming one of my favourite columnists) writes with wit, intelligence, humour, humanity and insight, and is well worth a read.
Andrew Spicer weighed in with a point form analysis. Ian Welsh and Kevin Brennan continue to wrap things up nicely at Tilting at Windmills, while Conservative apparatchik Norman Spector offers a series of readable links.
Don, at Revolutionary Moderation is certainly the most passionate commentator, as he tackles the reasons for the NDP’s poor showing (VanRamblings had earlier offered advice to both the NDP and the Liberals, on the issue of the urban vs suburban / rural split).

Needless to say, VanRamblings is relatively pleased with the outcome of the federal election. Prime Minister Paul Martin received the rebuke he so richly deserved for the months of hubris that defined his short term in office. Conservative leader Stephen Harper received his comeuppance for so arrogantly predicting a majority Tory government (“gee, we don’t think so, Stevie”, the Canadian populace pointedly told him).
And a jubilant (RealPlayer required) Jack Layton won his seat in Toronto-Danforth, with an increased presence for the NDP in Canada’s soon-to-be 38th Parliament. As for the 58% of Canadians who told pollsters they wished to see a Liberal-NDP coalition, well, depending on the final results, you seem to have been granted your wish.
VanRamblings is pleased former Progressive Conservative Scott Brison gained Kings-Hants, in Nova Scotia, for the Liberals, and just as pleased that former Alliance MP, Dr. Keith Martin, took Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca for the Grits. We are also pleased that Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan has been declared elected in Edmonton Centre.
On the lamentable side of the election night ledger, VanRamblings finds it regrettable that former Winnipeg mayor and Charleswood-St. James Liberal candidate Glen Murray went down to defeat, as did Toronto City Councillor and NDP candidate Olivia Chow in Trinity-Spadina, while the NDP’s Ian Waddell lost out to Martin Dream Team candidate David Emerson in Vancouver Kingsway. That the NDP’s Lorne Nystrom lost Regina-Qu’Appelle to no-name Tory Andrew Scheer is just short of devastating.
As of this writing, the election results are still trickling in, and no doubt there’ll be a few recounts in the days to come. At 12:26 a.m. PDT the interim results are as you see in the graph at the top of the column. The Liberals and the NDP cannot, together, govern comfortably. The Liberals will require the support of the Bloc Québécois in order to pass the legislation Paul Martin (RealPlayer required) promised Canadians his government would introduce, including a national childcare and early learning programme.
Canadians have spoken. Most Canadians have decided that we want to preserve the Canada of our forefathers, a compassionate Canada, a Canada that is a peacekeeper on the world stage, and a Canada which represents the interests of all Canadians, from the poorest among us to those who are most comfortable. This is our Canada, strong, independent, brave and free.
Good work, Canadians.

Well, after 36 gruelling days and nights, Election Day has finally arrived.
VanRamblings will trundle on over to the Vancouver-Quadra polling station in the early part of the day to cast our ballot.
From 3 p.m. on, Vancouver time, we’ll be glued to our television set (at home or at our neighbours). Later tonight, VanRamblings will post a brief synopsis of the day’s events, and our initial feelings about the outcome.
And then election day, and election fever, will be over. Hallelujah!