Ottawa… it rhymes with Obama… sort of…

Greetings, and welcome to beautiful Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the second coldest capital city in the world.

After Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Well, the third coldest really, ever since Kazakhstan moved its capital north a dozen years ago, from balmy Almaty to freezing Astana (you remember that big move, don’t you?).

Of course, some put Ottawa all the way down at seventh on the chilly capital city list, after Ulaanbaatar, Almaty, Moscow, Helsinki, Reykjavik, and Tallinn, Estonia.

But still. We’re cold. Really cold. Top Ten cold.

So cold we’re cool.

And we do have the world’s longest skating rink.

Well, we DID have the world’s longest skating rink. Until last year, when Winnipeg’s River Trail knocked the Rideau Canal out of the Guinness Book of World Records, thanks to a few hundred metres of extra shoveling.

But Winnipeg’s skating trail – as long as it may be – is a scrawny, emaciated thing, the width of three or four skaters. Dozens of Ottawans can fit across the Rideau Canal. Hundreds, in some sections.

So we still have the world’s LARGEST skating rink.

Does that make you feel better?

And we remain the world headquarters for Beaver Tails. And maple baseball bats. And Canadian politicians.

If you want any of those things, you know where best to find ‘em.

Right here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Did I mention how cold it gets?

Years ago, I interviewed a number of ambassadors to Canada who had arrived from warmer corners of the globe. I asked them about their experiences serving in the second… or third… or seventh coldest capital city on earth.

Some of them struggled to maintain a diplomatic demeanor. The ambassador from Barbados seemed near tears when describing his first Ottawa winter.

New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Canada was much more cheery. He explained his country was so small that he had to serve simultaneously as envoy not only to Ottawa, but also to the capitals of a number of Caribbean island nations.

As chance would have it, he always had to do his annual tour of Jamaica, Trinidad et al. in January, February and March.

He always made sure to brag about his winter travels to his fellow ambassadors back in Ottawa. Diplomacy can be a vicious business.

The New Zealand emissary didn’t seem too fazed about leaving Ottawa in February and missing Winterlude.

Too bad for him, no? Because Winterlude is… cool.

In fact, Winterlude can be added to the list of Things Ottawa is the World Capital Of: Beaver Tails, maple baseball bats, etc.

Let’s see Barbados try to host an outdoor ice sculpture competition.

So… why am I bothering to go through this list? Why am I trying to hype the wintertime charms of my adopted hometown?

I’m doing so with one person in mind:

Barack H. Obama.

The new American president, you may have heard, will be visiting Ottawa this week. It will be his first trip outside the United States since his inauguration, restoring a longstanding tradition that was broken by George W. Bush, who visited Mexico first.

Bush eventually did show up in Ottawa for a full state visit, complete with a lavish dinner at the Museum of Civilization, a courtesy call to the Governor-General, and hundreds of riot police holding back thousands of protestors.

When Bill Clinton visited Ottawa as president in the winter of 1995, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton went for a skate on the canal and a taste of Beaver Tail.

But word is that Obama will not be doing any of those things, despite the fact his visit coincides with Winterlude.

He won’t be addressing Parliament (he may be saving his first major address on foreign soil for the Muslim world), he won’t be meeting the public, and they may keep Air Force One’s engine running at the Ottawa airport, because he won’t be in town for more than a few hours.

It’s a bit of letdown for Obama’s many Canadian fans. He’s more popular here than any Canadian politician.

But there may be time to change his mind and get him out on the canal. Despite a Hawaiian background, Obama – who cut his political teeth in Chicago – is a cold-weather fan.

A few days after becoming president, he was already scolding the residents of Washington, D.C. for closing down local schools on account of a bit of snow.

No doubt Obama’s aides will be perusing this blog to prepare for his trip north.

So… have I mentioned how delightfully cold it gets up here?

The Conservative (???!!!!) Budget

Sometimes the best way to put present circumstances in perspective and to figure out what to expect in future is to look back on the past.

With that in mind, I dug out an old report card.

The comments started out well:

“The positives are impressive: he has a brilliant strategic mind, a sound grasp of public policy, and good communications skills in both French and English.”

Not bad. On the other hand:

“The negatives – his mistrust of the grassroots, his tendency not to be a team player … and the tendency to withdraw – are manageable if they are acknowledged and compensated for by the strengths of others.”

Well, there you have it. The good and the bad. A blunt assessment of protégée by mentor.

The protégée, in this case, is the Prime Minister of Canada. And the mentor is no political detractor, but rather Preston Manning, the man who gave Stephen Harper his first job in politics, as his trusted lieutenant in the Reform Party that Manning founded and led.

The Reform Party, of course, morphed into the Canadian Alliance, which Stephen Harper eventually led into a merger with the old PC Party. The united Right party – the big-C Conservatives – then took power, Harper became Prime Minister, and the small-c conservative revolution that Manning championed became reality in Canada.

Not so fast.

Did you happen to hear about the federal budget released the other day? Huge deficits, massive spending, the addition of a forecasted $85-billion to the national debt over five years, the creation of a new Trudeauesque regional development agency – this one for recession-ravaged Southern Ontario, and… hard to believe, but true… money for culture and the arts.

The old Reform Party – indeed, the old Harper – would have furiously attacked any government that dared to propose this kind of a budget. The old Harper would have called it wasteful, irresponsible… liberal.

Instead, it was his party and his government that introduced just such a budget.

Clearly, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

What we’re in, of course, is a global economic crisis. And the budget is a reaction to that. Governments – conservative and liberal alike – all over the Western world are proposing similar measures to stimulate their economies.

In their budget document, Canada’s Conservatives described their measures as “timely”, “targeted” and “temporary”. Whether or not they turn out to be any of those things won’t be evident for many months.

What the measures clearly aren’t:

Conservative.

The government anticipates that once things improve, it will be able to revert to its more traditional approach of slashing spending, paying down the debt, and shrinking the role of government in the economy instead of expanding it.

This may be wishful thinking. History has shown that it’s much easier to open the spending taps than it is to close them again.

Of course, every budget is not only an economic blueprint, but also a political document. This one perhaps more than others because it comes after the government’s near-death experience last fall. The budget was designed to save the government from defeat at the hands of a newly united opposition.

In that respect, it seems to have succeeded, at least in the short run. The morning after the budget’s release, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters he was putting the Conservatives “on probation” and the Official Opposition would support the budget as long as the government agreed to regular reports to Parliament on the progress of the economy.

That’s a heck of a lot better for Harper than what Ignatieff’s predecessor, Stéphane Dion, was offering last fall – namely, an immediate vote of non-confidence in the government and its replacement by a coalition government.

Which brings us back to Preston Manning’s observations about Harper, taken from Manning’s 2002 autobiography.

Global economic crisis aside, the reason the government had to move as far as it did from its core philosophical beliefs in introducing such a budget is tied to some of the negative characteristics that Manning observed in his former lieutenant.

Harper’s mistrust of consultation, his go-it-alone instincts, led him astray, revitalized his political opposition and created a situation where his government will be forced to consult Liberals more than ever before and put a tremendous amount of water in its ideological wine if it wants to survive.

If you disagree with the Conservative Party’s ideology, you’ll see that as a good thing for the country. But if you’re a true believer, you may be pining for the days of Reform.

Programming note: I produced an interesting televised panel discussion on this very topic the other day, where smarter minds than I weighed in. You can download a podcast here.

Political Pilgrims

A Toronto friend of mine began putting together her travel plans back in November. Good thing she did. Tickets and hotel rooms are at a premium. If she hadn’t booked early, she may have missed out completely on the chance to take the trip…

Journalist colleagues from across the country have lobbied their bosses for weeks to send them on the same trek for work…

Over a late December dinner in New York City, some American pals said how much they’d love to make the journey and mused about putting together travel plans of their own. They had less than a month to pull it off, so I’m not sure if their plans came together…

Just a few days ago, a Facebook friend in California reported that he bought a last-minute plane ticket on a whim and was traveling across the continent for the big event. Hope he’s able to find a last-minute place to stay…

It’s not often that so many people are inspired to drop everything in their lives and travel great distances just to witness a political event.

Then again, it’s not often the Canadian federal government delivers a budget in January.

So… no surprise to find so many out-of-towners of my acquaintance planning trips to the nation’s capital to hear the finance minister’s big speech and to luxuriate in the nasal-passage-freezing chill of mid-winter Ottawa.

Okay, you’re right. You caught me.

Just kidding about the Ottawa stuff.

But all of the above anecdotes are true. Instead of Ottawa, my friends’ dream trips involve January pilgrimages to another nation’s capital – Washington, DC – to witness next Tuesday’s inauguration of the first-ever African-American president.

Barack Obama’s inaugural address will likely be discussed more among future historians – and for much longer – than will finance minister Jim Flaherty’s upcoming budget speech.

But the two events are related in many ways.

For one thing, with Obama coming to power, Stephen Harper finds himself in an odd historical position for a Canadian Prime Minister: The American head of government is more popular among Canadians than is he.

Jean Chrétien never had that problem with George W. Bush. Neither did Harper himself.

Although Obama faces an unfathomably difficult financial crisis and plans to put his country into an unfathomably big deficit to deal with it, he also has a great surplus of political capital to spend.

Harper and Flaherty frittered away a big store of their own political capital during last fall’s Parliamentary drama, with their ham-handed attempt to use a fiscal update in recessionary times as a blunt political instrument with which to beat down their opponents.

When opposition parties formed a coalition to try to take power, Harper’s humbling trip to the Governor-General to seek a Parliamentary prorogation was the only thing that kept him in his job into this new year.

The upcoming earlier-than-usual budget will be another attempt to save the government.

Not to mention the country’s economy.

The Canadian Prime Minister is probably hoping that some of Barack’s Magic will rub off on him when Obama makes his first foreign trip as U.S. President to Ottawa, where he’s expected to address Parliament.

The Harper government’s press release announcing the as-yet-unscheduled visit seemed positively giddy, especially in comparison to the Prime Minister’s previous reluctance to appear too close to George W. Bush.

When Bush visited Ottawa several years back, the downtown streets were clogged with angry protesters. If public polling is any predictor, Obama’s visit will more likely clog this city’s streets with star-struck well-wishers.

While the new U.S. president may provoke some political excitement among Canadians, it is his economic plan that will have a more lasting effect.

Indeed, economists say that the success or failure of Obama’s policies may have a bigger effect on Canada’s economy than will Flaherty’s upcoming budget.

Will Obama follow through with campaign promises to re-open the NAFTA accord? How will his environmental policies affect Alberta’s energy industry? Will he loosen Bush-era border controls to allow Canadian goods to flow more easily into the United States?

Most importantly, will his domestic plan succeed in reversing the economic slide of Canada’s biggest trading partner?

If it doesn’t, the best-laid plans of our own government will do little to shield us from sharing the Americans’ pain.

So if you find yourself down in Washington for the new president’s swearing in, or waving a welcome banner at the Ottawa airport when he lands here, let him know we’re counting on him.

Anything can happen in Canadian politics… who’da thunk it?

So how’s it going to end?

Will the Conservative government fall and be replaced by a Liberal/NDP coalition propped up by the Bloc Québecois?

Will Stephen Harper manage to prorogue Parliament and live to be Prime Minister for a little while longer?

Will we end up with our fourth election in 4.5 years and our second in three months? Or will a best-of-five coin flip decide on who gets to govern?

Or maybe Governor-General Michaëlle Jean will declare “off with their heads” and end up ruling by decree…

Here’s something to contemplate:

Anything can happen in Canadian politics.

That’s not a sentiment you hear too often from too many quarters. But after five days of things happening in Canadian politics that no one would have ever predicted, and with the prospect of another five days or five weeks or five months or so of unpredictable things happening in Canadian politics… well… that’s something to contemplate…

Here’s another interesting thing. Yesterday was exactly two years to the day that Stéphane Dion became leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. 

And those two years may go down in history as some of the worst two years ever experienced by a leader of a major federal party in Canada.

They seemed to have culminated in a disastrous campaign and election loss this past October, which seemed to have sealed Dion’s fate as leader.

Here’s how I described it last month:

“Sadly for Dion, he will not get a second chance. The political promise that won the hearts of Liberal delegates on Dec. 2, 2006 got trumped by a deficit of political skills…”

Shows how much I know.

Well, I was probably right on the political skills part. But I may have been wrong on the second chance.

My crystal ball is as bad as anyone’s who claims to have one, but it looks as if Dion has about a 50-50 chance of shedding his likely epitaph of “Only the second Liberal leader in history never to become Prime Minister” and gaining one that reads “23^rd Prime Minister of Canada”.

With an asterisk, of course, because he will be gone as Liberal leader next May whether or not he is also PM.

And then there is the matter of the 22^nd Prime Minister of Canada.

As I write, Stephen Harper remains Prime Minister, and is using “every legal means at his disposal” to keep from losing the job. Will he succeed? People have lost money underestimating the man.

But no matter what happens to Harper going forward, this entire incident may have critically wounded his political career, the success of which depended on a reputation for competent management and serious purpose.

The wound was self-inflicted.

When Harper won a second minority mandate following an election this fall that many thought was unnecessary, his marching orders seemed clear:

Drop the extreme partisan shtick and get down to the serious work of governing this country through a looming economic crisis.

That’s what he said he was prepared to do on election night. And his statesmanlike tone continued into the opening of Parliament.

But on the major challenge of the day, the international economic crisis, he dropped the ball in what could be a history-changing way.

An economic update to set the agenda for dealing with the crisis instead became an opportunity for partisan political gamesmanship, which only succeeded in uniting opposition parties against the government.

And so an economic crisis begat a political crisis, which begat a constitutional crisis, which may have begat a national unity crisis in both Quebec and the West.

Harper may survive in the short term. But he will come out of this one way or another as a weakened leader, his political future uncertain in a way that was unimaginable just a few days ago.

***

Programming note: If you are looking for a more in-depth look at all of the twists and turns of the ongoing Canadian political crisis, you could do worse that have a look or listen to an hour-long televised discussion I co-produced on Monday night. But you should tune in soon. At the pace that developments are developing, what gets discussed one night may be out of date by the next morning.

 

 

Kicking Ass in Post-Partisan Politics

A friend of mine used to be a major partisan of a major political party.

Come election time, there were few lawn signs bigger than his. He would tirelessly canvas for his chosen candidate and take it pretty hard if that candidate did not triumph. The ebbs and flows of his party’s fortunes would influence his own frame of mind.

He would socialize among fellow members of his party, enthusiastically devote large chunks of free time to party activities, and view most public issues through a partisan lens.

Although I never asked him this question, I’m reasonably certain if someone had told him to state five adjectives that best described himself, one of those adjectives would match the capitalized name of his  party.

As a journalist, I zealously follow partisan politics, and have covered it for many years. But I’ve never been a member of – or loyal to – any political party. Although I find party politics fascinating, and admire the passion and commitment of many of its practitioners, I’ve never quite been able to understand what it’s like from the inside. Or what it’s like to want to be on the inside.

From my comfortable perch as an outside observer, I can see a parallel between the fervor of party members and that of … say… sports fans. A potent brew of dedication, single-minded enthusiasm, hope and faith seems to drive both groups of people. Is the Toronto Maple Leaf fan whose perennial belief that his team is finally going to win the Cup any different in temperament, loyalty and optimistic outlook than the NDP partisan who believes Jack Layton will become the next Prime Minister?

Just as dedicated Leaf fans will have trouble appreciating the talent and superior appeal of the Montreal Canadiens, so too will partisans have a tough time conceding that any other party may have a better approach than their own on any given issue.

That element of partisanship is the double-edged sword of political life. It helps parties to mobilize, focus and compete for power. Unapologetically partisan Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella titled his guide to doing all of the above “Kicking Ass in Canadian Politics” because he argued that doing so is a necessary precursor to implementing the vision that brings anyone into politics in the first place.

On the other hand, the hyper-partisanship of political parties is probably one of the root causes of voter cynicism, apathy and low election turnout in the population at large.

Recently, my once-partisan friend started a new job that requires him to be unaffiliated with any political party. During last month’s federal election campaign, there was no lawn sign in front of his house. I asked him if he found it hard to stay out of the fray, and was surprised to hear him say he didn’t.

His job keeps him engaged with political issues and the political process, but he said that being outside partisan politics gave him a perspective he didn’t have before. Now, when he hears party members react to any given issue in a fiercely partisan way, he smiles and thinks “I used to be like that”.

Is my friend onto something? Certainly in the recent American presidential election, one of the big buzzwords was “post-partisanship”. The victory of president-elect Barack Obama was not only historic because he is set to become the first African-American president in history, but also because of the way he achieved his triumph.

He mobilized voters and contributors like no one else had ever before, through grassroots efforts and over the Internet. Most notably, he appealed to younger voters with his inspiring talk of hope and change, and his unwavering message of unity across party lines and demographic groups.

“There is no red state, there is no blue state, there is only one United States of America,” Obama thundered at campaign rally after rally. The message resonated with post-partisan young voters. Early indications are that voter turnout among youth was higher than in any other American election except that of 1972, the first election after the voting age was lowered to 18.

Does Obama’s win mean we’re in a new political era? Hard to say. Obama himself muddied the waters when he appointed as his chief of staff congressman Rahm Emanuel, who has a reputation – say his opponents – as one of the most hyper-partisan Democrats in Washington.

An acknowledgement, maybe, that even in a post-partisan world, there are still political benefits to kicking ass.

The Curse of the Democratic President (on Canadian Conservatives)

All around the United States… all around the world… millions of people await the results of tonight’s historic American election. The anxiety and anticipation levels are palpably apparent even here in Ottawa, where people are talking about little else.

As in every other national capital, officials in Ottawa have been gauging the implications of the anticipated election results in the U.S. and preparing their government for future relations with the new American administration.

The anxiety level may be especially high in the office of Stephen Harper, the newly re-elected Prime Minister of Canada. For this country, no other international relationship comes close to approaching in importance the one Canada has with its southern neighbor.

If polls are accurate, the PMO will have to adjust to the new international priorities of a Barack Obama administration, which are certain to be markedly different from those of George W. Bush on such important files as Afghanistan, the environment, trade, and border security.

Harper may also have to do some damage control with Obama over the so-called NAFTA-gate incident from earlier this year, when a Canadian diplomatic leak made Obama look as if he was being hypocritical on re-opening NAFTA and may have contributed to his loss to Hillary Clinton in the Ohio Democratic primary.

Finally, Harper – a keen student of Canadian political history – may be anxious about an interesting phenomenon that has affected a number of his Conservative predecessors. Call it the Curse of the Democratic President.

Conservative Prime Ministers don’t come to power all too often in Canada, but on three separate occasions, dating back to the Great Depression, the inauguration of a Democratic President in the U.S. has served as a harbinger of a Conservative defeat, leading to an extended spell on the opposition benches.

The most recent example came in 1993, when Bill Clinton was sworn in as U.S. President at the tail end of Brian Mulroney’s reign as PM, in the midst of an economic downturn. Within ten months of Clinton’s inauguration, Jean Chrétien’s Liberals had taken power north of the border, and wound up keeping it until Harper became PM in 2006.

When John F. Kennedy was inaugurated President in January, 1961, his prime ministerial counterpart John Diefenbaker was leading the largest majority government in Canadian history up until that point. A year and a half later, Diefenbaker – who never got along with Kennedy all too well – squeaked back into power with a minority. But in April 1963, the Liberals began a string of election victories that would keep them in office for the next 16 years.

The curse began during the prime ministership of R.B. Bennett, who had the misfortune of governing during the Great Depression. He had been in office for 2.5 years when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office in March, 1933. Bennett tried to follow Roosevelt’s lead by introducing a Canadian New Deal, but it couldn’t save his political career. The Liberals took power a year and a half after Roosevelt became President, and stayed in office for more than 21 years, well into the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

A Democratic President taking office during an international economic downturn? It’s enough to keep a Canadian Conservative Prime Minister up at night…

Stéphane Dion, Joe Clark and John Tory

On the evening of Dec. 2, 2006, in a wide corridor of Montreal’s Palais des congrès, I bumped into a political lobbyist of my acquaintance.

Both of us were trudging slowly through the middle of a large, loud and excited crowd of people, everyone leaving the main hall of the convention centre and heading out the doors toward the charms of downtown Montreal Saturday night.

Not too much earlier, inside the main hall, Stéphane Dion stood on a confetti-laden stage, flanked by Jean Chrétien, John Turner, and Paul Martin, three former residents of 24 Sussex Drive.

As the music blared and Dion waved to the thousands of convention delegates who had just elected him as the newest – and perhaps unlikeliest – leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, he had every reason to believe he would one day also live in the same house, and hold the same title of Prime Minister, as had the men surrounding him.

After all, of the ten Liberals who preceded Dion as leader, only one – Edward Blake – had failed to become Prime Minister of Canada. And Blake’s leadership of the party came to an end in 1887.

Dion had just won a job that had provided a surefire ticket to the Prime Minister’s Office for almost twelve decades straight.

The delegates seemed as united as could be expected after a dramatic, emotion-laden convention that saw Dion go from fourth to first place over two days and four ballots.

He had come into the convention with the estimated support of about 15 per cent of the delegates, well behind front-runner Michael Ignatieff’s 28 per cent.

But on the final ballot, with only Dion and Ignatieff left standing, he beat the former front-runner 55 to 45 per cent.

He was a compromise candidate, sure, coming up the middle of a bitter, divisive rivalry between Ignatieff and Bob Rae. But as they streamed out of the convention hall, most delegates seemed happy with the choice, many of them won over by Dion’s fresh message of change, integrity and environmentalism. Some felt they had dodged a bullet by picking the best candidate to unite the party behind a new kind of politics and a new, greener vision of Liberalism.

My hard-bitten acquaintance in the crowded hallway wasn’t buying any of it. He had come to the convention as a Rae supporter, and was departing it shaking his head, unmoved by the victory of the bookish Dion.

“The Liberals,” he said to me moments after I offered my greetings, “just had their Joe Clark moment.”

Almost two years later, the comparison has proven apt. Dion, like Clark three decades earlier when he won the Progressive Conservative leadership, had few allies in his party, won the leadership by default when more charismatic and prominent rivals failed to earn enough delegate trust, and promptly developed a reputation as an honorable-but-bumbling leader with big ideas but few political smarts to implement them.

After leading his party in last month’s federal election to one of the worst electoral defeats in its history, and then reluctantly announcing he was stepping down from the leadership, Dion has joined Edward Blake as the answer to a newly rephrased political trivia question:

Who were the only two Liberal leaders who failed to become Prime Minister?

In his electoral campaign, Dion resembled not so much Joe Clark but more John Tory, the Ontario PC leader who crashed and burned in last year’s provincial election campaign.

Both Dion and Tory ran big policy ideas up the flagpole for voters – Tory’s was public funding for non-Catholic faith-based schools and Dion’s was the so-called Green Shift, which promised income tax cuts to balance out a new carbon tax that would help fight climate change – but neither leader bothered to check beforehand if members of his own party were saluting.

After Tory lost the election last year, here’s what I wrote about his campaign here:

Conviction does matter, of course. And yes, principles and policies also matter. But in the absence of politics – the process by which those-who-would-lead persuade those-who-would-be-led to follow them down any particular path – conviction and policies can be as hollow as… well… as hollow as John Tory’s campaign turned out to be.

The description fits Dion’s campaign, too.

Sadly for Dion, he will not get a second chance. The political promise that won the hearts of Liberal delegates on Dec. 2, 2006 got trumped by a deficit of political skills perceived that day by at least one clear-eyed observer in the crowd.

Picking through election entrails

Suppose they held an election and nothing happened?

Not too much, anyway.

In September, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared the 2.5-year-old minority Parliament to be unworkable.

In search of a more workable mandate, he violated his own fixed-election-date legislation to dissolve that Parliament and send Canadians to the polls for the third time in four years.

Five weeks, 300-million-dollars, one pooping puffin controversy, two roundtable debates, dozens of negative ads, and one international economic crisis later, did he get that mandate?

Well… kinda.

Sorta.

In his third kick at the can as party leader, Harper’s Conservatives gained a few seats, but still fell short of a majority government. And thanks to some ill-received policies and poorly executed strategies, the party failed to build upon its big Quebec breakthrough in the last election, once again winning ten seats in that province.

The NDP, under Jack Layton, also picked up a few more seats, but fell far short of the goal Layton publicly and repeatedly set. He said he was running for Prime Minister, but ended up once again as the leader of the fourth party in the House of Commons.

With the help of some Conservative self-inflicted wounds, Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Québécois won by holding steady. Once again, the Bloc showed that rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated, as it won the lion’s share of Quebec seats for the sixth straight election. More than any other factor, it is the Bloc’s enduring ability to hold onto dozens of Quebec seats that accounts for the fact that Canadians have elected minority governments in three elections running.

The Green Party won a plethora of publicity and media attention, a seat at the table of the televised leaders’ debates for leader Elizabeth May, and in the end, exactly zero seats in the House of Commons for all its efforts.

And then there is the Liberal Party…

Oh, the Liberals…

It was one of the worst election results ever for the Grits, once known as Canada’s Natural Governing Party. The Liberals won only eight seats west of Ontario, suffered a net loss of seats in their Atlantic Canada stronghold, and made some marginal gains in Quebec, where they continued to be almost exclusively limited to the island of Montreal.

But the most telling results for the Liberal Party came in Ontario. A decade ago, the party regularly won almost all of the available seats in this province. This time around, it didn’t even take most of those 106 seats.

Conservative candidates won almost half of all Ontario ridings, the NDP increased its seat count in the province by almost 50 per cent by taking away Liberal seats in Northern Ontario, and the Liberal Party was in retreat everywhere save its electoral fortress of Toronto.

Even in the country’s largest city, the Conservatives began showing signs of breaching the Liberal castle walls. They took several seats in the suburban 905 region just outside of Toronto.

And Conservative star candidate Peter Kent won the riding of Thornhill, which borders the city of Toronto.

Thornhill happens to be the riding with the largest per-capita Jewish population in the province. It also happens to be the one riding the provincial Progressive Conservative party picked up in their wretched campaign during last year’s Ontario election.

Picking through the entrails of this year’s federal vote, there were several other signs the Conservative Party has made some headway in their attempts to win over the support of the traditionally big-L-Liberal so-called ethnic vote.

The Conservatives took several ridings with diverse multicultural populations from the Liberals in Ontario and British Columbia. And in Toronto proper, ridings such as Eglinton-Lawrence, York Centre, and Willowdale – ridings with significant minority-group populations that are usually among the safest Liberal seats in the country – featured much tighter races.

In 2006, Liberal Joe Volpe won Eglinton-Lawrence by defeating his Conservative rival by more than 11,000 votes. This time around, Volpe’s margin of victory was reduced to 2,200.

Within hours – minutes even – of the final vote count, quotes from anonymous Liberals began appearing in the media calling for the head of leader Stéphane Dion.

Fighting his first election as leader, Dion failed miserably to reverse his party’s slide of the past few years.

But the nearly bankrupt and disunited Liberals can ill-afford another lengthy, expensive and divisive leadership race.

After all, we’ve ended up with another minority Parliament, and Canadians may be going to the polls yet again before too long.

Election night cheat sheet for political junkies

UPDATE: Election post-mortem here

Will tonight’s federal election result in more of the same or are we in for a surprise or two? Here’s a cheat sheet on the tightest local races, which are likely to decide the election. Clip, save, place next to your chips, beer and TV remote, and consult as results pour in from east to west:

Atlantic Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador: The big question here is how effective Premier Danny Williams‘ Anyone But Conservative campaign has been. The Conservatives went into this election holding three of the province’s seven seats — St. John’s East, St. John’s South – Mt. Pearl, and Avalon — and are in danger of losing all three: Two to the Liberals and St. John’s East to the NDP’s star candidate, Jack Harris, the party’s former provincial leader.

Prince Edward Island: The Island’s four ridings have not gone anything but Liberal for 20 years. The Conservatives seem to think they have enough of a shot in the riding of Egmont, which takes in the city of Summerside and the western part of PEI, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper made PEI the first stop in his big final-day cross-country push yesterday. The Liberals are running former PEI Premier Keith Milligan there against the Tory candidate Gail Shea, a former provincial cabinet minister.

Nova Scotia: No riding here has garnered more interest than Central Nova, where Green Party leader Elizabeth May is trying to topple Defence Minister Peter MacKay. If she succeeds, it will be one of the top stories of the election. Elsewhere, former Conservative MP Bill Casey will try to hold onto Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley as an independent candidate, and the NDP hopes to add to its two N.S. seats (Halifax and Sackville-Eastern Shore) by poaching Dartmouth-Cole Harbour from the Libs and South Shore – St. Margaret’s from the Tories.

New Brunswick: The Liberals tend to dominate in the northern half of this province (with the exception of the NDP stronghold of Acadie-Bathurst). and the Tories tend to dominate in the southern half, leaving a trio of adjoining swing ridings in central and western New Brunswick worth watching: Fredericton, Tobique – Mactaquaq and Madawaska – Restigouche.

Quebec

Montreal / Laval : The Conservatives are not a factor anywhere in the metropolis, where the Liberals still hold on to their core Quebec vote. There are four races to watch here, all in traditional Liberal ridings the Grits hope to retake from opponents. In Papineau, Ahuntsic and Jeanne-Le-Ber, those opponents are Bloc MPs. Papineau Liberal candidate Justin Trudeau hopes to become the third son-of-a-Prime-Minister in Canadian history to sit as an MP (trivia points to anyone who can name the other two). In Outremont, the Liberals hope to unseat NDP incumbent Thomas Mulcair, who won the seat in a byelection. If Mulcair holds on, it will be the first time in history that an NDP candidate won a Quebec seat in a general election.

Quebec City / Northeastern Quebec: These are the areas where the Conservatives made their great breakthroughs in the last election – breakthroughs they hoped to build on this time around. Instead, an erratic campaign has them hoping to preserve what they already had. Their seats on the south shore of the Saint-Laurent, across from Quebec City, seem safe, but several in the provincial capital and in Saguenay-Lac Saint Jean are in danger of swinging back to the Bloc. These ridings include Beauport-Limoilou, Charlesbourg-Haute-Saint-Charles, Louis-Hébert, Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, and the Jonquière-Alma riding of cabinet minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn. The only safe Conservative seat north of the river seems to be Louis-Saint-Laurent, held by Heritage Minister Josée Verner.

Elsewhere: It’s all safe Bloc seats, including Vaudreuil-Soulanges, where previously unelected cabinet minister Michael Fortier is expected to remain unelected. The only exceptions are the three Outaouais ridings, across the river from Ottawa. Hull-Aylmer is the only remaining safe-ish Liberal seat outside of Montreal. Pontiac will continue to be held by Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon if the other three major parties continue to split the vote. And in Gatineau, NDP candidate Francoise Boivin hopes to win back the seat she lost to the Bloc as a Liberal incumbent last time around.

Ontario

Toronto: The biggest Liberal bastion in the country. A couple of tight NDP-Liberal races worth watching are in Parkdale – High Park, where former Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy hopes to win back his old provincial riding from incumbent New Democrat Peggy Nash, and Beaches-East York, which former NDP MPP Marilyn Churley will once again try to win away from longtime Liberal MP Maria Minna.

The 905: The region surrounding Toronto where many elections get decided. Many interesting races to watch here. In the eastern part of the 905 semi-circle, Oshawa always hosts tight three-way races. Farther west, the Conservatives hope to retake Newmarket-Aurora now that Belinda Stronach has left politics and Halton, now that incumbent Garth Turner has left their party and become a Liberal. Similarly, the Liberals hope to retake Mississauga-Streetsville from Grit-turned-Tory Wajid Khan. Conservatives also have a chance in several other ridings that have gone Liberal for years: Mississauga-Erindale, Mississauga South, and Oakville. In the Hamilton-Niagara region, the Liberals hope to retake Hamilton East – Stoney Creek from the NDP and St. Catherines from the Tories. And look for a close three-way race in Welland.

Southwestern Ontario: The two closest races in this region are likely to be in Brant and London West, where Liberal incumbents defend their seats against Conservative challengers.

Eastern and Northern Ontario: Incumbents seem pretty safe in Eastern Ontario. The closest race in this region is likely to be Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, where Dan Boudria attempts to win back his father Don’s old riding, won by the Conservatives in 2008. The NDP has high hopes in the north, where New Democratic candidates have their eyes on a number of seats the Liberals won last time around, including Algoma – Manitoulin – Kapuskasing, Kenora, Nickel Belt, Thunder Bay – Rainy River and Thunder Bay – Superior North. Also worth watching is Parry Sound – Muskoka, which cabinet minister Tony Clement won last time in the closest race in the country.

Prairie Provinces

Manitoba: The Liberal’s three incumbent MPs in the province were all fighting tough battles in this election. The NDP hopes to grab Churchill, the Tories hope to win Saint-Boniface and Winnipeg South-Centre. If the Libs have any chance to regain an old seat, it will be in Winnipeg South, won by the Tories last time.

Saskatchewan: Ralph Goodale’s one Liberal seat in this province is probably safe, as are most of the other Conservative seats in the province, with the exception of Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar and Palliser, former NDP seats that party hopes to win back, and Desenthé-Missinippi-Churchill RIver, which Progressive-Conservative-turned-Liberal David Orchard hopes to win after being denied the nomination by Stéphane Dion in a recent byelection.

Alberta: The easiest province to pick should go all-Tory all-the-time. The two ridings where there could be longshot upsets are Edmonton-Strathcona, which the NDP often wins provincially and where it has the best (longshot) chance in he province, and Calgary Northeast, where a divisive nomination race resulted in one Conservative running as an independent against the official party candidate, with a (longshot) chance at splitting the vote.

British Columbia and the North

Vancouver Island: Three races to watch here: Esquimault-Juan de Fuca, where Liberal incumbent Keith Martin is in a three-way race, Vancouver Island North, which the Tories hope to take back from the NDP, and Saanich – Gulf Islands, where cabinet minister Gary Lunn faces an unexpectedly strong challenge from the Liberals, after the NDP candidate was forced to withdraw from the race.

Greater Vancouver: Many interesting races here. Liberal incumbents face strong Tory challenges in Richmond, Newton-North Delta, North Vancouver and Vancouver-Quadra, and the Liberals and NDP are in a tough race in Vancouver Kingsway, most recently held by Liberal-turned-Tory-turned-retired-cabinet-minister David Emerson. Two other ridings worth watching are West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, which the Conservatives hope to win back from Liberal-turned-Green Blair Wilson, and Surrey North, once held by the late Chuck Cadman. Cadman’s widow Dona is running for the Tories in a riding won in 2006 by the NDP.

Elsewhere in B.C.: Many safe Tory and NDP seats all over rural British Columbia. The one exception may be Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, which the NDP hopes to poach from the Conservatives.

The Arctic Territories: Yukon is a safe Liberal seat, Western Arctic is a safe NDP seat, but Nunavut may be tossup, which explains why so many leaders have visited Iqaluit lately.

Tune in tonight, and keep this guide handy…