The New Nation - Internet Edition

George Abraham

Canadians have been scratching their heads wondering why their government just spent $300 million on federal elections that resulted in no clear winner. Although the Conservatives retained power, fewer people showed up to vote than ever before and gave the ruling party a mandate that was well short of the majority they yearned for.

An immediate casualty has been the leader of Canada's "natural governing party," the Liberals. Stéphane Dion, after much introspection and a prolonged silence following his party's poor showing, announced last week that he would step down, but not until a new leader is chosen. He thereby ensured that his unlikely political career - he was hand-picked from a university campus and catapulted to Cabinet by former prime minister Jean Chrétien - would continue to flicker for a few more months, giving him breathing space and perhaps allowing him to raise money to repay his substantial debts from his successful party leadership contest two years ago.

On election night, even as the results were trickling in, commentators wrote Dion off as "toast." He was derided as a poor salesman of his Green Shift platform that failed to resonate with an electorate that was hungry for an eco-friendly message, but wanted one that would not hurt their wallets either.

Unlike the Conservatives, the Liberals have a pantheon of leaders, including the renowned former Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff and a former premier of Ontario, Bob Rae. There are many more horses that will enter the race, with many in the now humbled party arguing against continuing with more of the same, instead passing the torch to a younger generation of leaders, among them freshly-minted MP Justin Trudeau, the son of legendary prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Other than the rout of the Liberals, the Oct. 14 elections were a non-event. Voters gave Stephen Harper's Conservative Party their trust, although not enough for his government to survive no-confidence motions in Parliament on their own.

With more seats than the last time round and an electorate that is clearly suffering from ennui, the Opposition would be well-advised to pull its punches and keep the Tories in power for a while. With three federal elections in the last four years, voters have already had one too many.

The results were also a cautionary signal for the Conservatives because they failed to win a plurality of the votes. The centre-left parties including the Liberals, the New Democratic Party (NDP), the Greens and the separatist Bloc Quebecois, won two-thirds of the votes cast - a less than reassuring mandate for the ruling party.

Although the American credit meltdown struck in mid-campaign, throwing the Harper campaign's playbook off kilter for a few days, the Conservatives faced the feeblest of foes in this campaign.

Harper is expected to name a new Cabinet this week to reflect the geographical and demographic inroads that his party has been able to make. It is expected to have more women and may also include more non-white ministers as an acknowledgement to the new immigrants who helped elect Conservative MPs in urban ridings in Ontario and British Columbia. To the consternation of the Liberals, the so-called immigrant vote is trending right - just like the rest of Canada - and does not appear to have recoiled against the recent immigration reforms.

Other than some residual interest in the faces that will be dropped from Cabinet and seeing the new Tory stars, Canadians have already switched channels to the American elections. Even during the campaign up north, most of them had their ears cocked to the much more exciting duel between Barack Obama and John McCain, clearly preferring the Democratic contender long before former Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Colin Powell lent his clincher endorsement. If Obama were running in Canada, it would be a no contest, and there has been considerable soul-searching here over why this country cannot give birth to a leader with his cadence, eloquence and brilliance.

But, pundits have been quick to point to the anomaly in the making as Canada trends right, while Americans vote liberal. Throughout most of Canada's history, it has been the opposite. The last time Canada voted Conservative and the Americans went for a liberal president happened with the election of Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, at a time when a Conservative was prime minister in Canada: Richard B. Bennett. This was the era of the Depression, a circumstance that bears close resemblance to present-day conditions.

There is already talk of New Deal workfare programmes in the US, something that is unlikely to be popular among conservative true believers, those who swear by small government. Like it or not, Canada must take its economic cues from Washington, just as it will do on Nov. 15 when the world's leading economies meet in Washington to discuss more robust counter-measures against the global credit contagion.