2011 Federal Election Afterthoughts

The last thirty-seven days have been exciting and exhausting, but with the abrupt end of the federal election campaign - the fluctuating polls, the talk of coalitions, the debates, and the hockey analogies - not to mention an end to the seven years of minority government that could have collapsed at any moment, Canada has chosen to elect a "strong, stable, national Conservative majority government", leaving myself, and plenty of other Canadians, in an election hangover - lying in bed, perhaps with a light headache, wondering, "what in the world happened Monday night?" and ignoring the fact that this is a rather long run-on sentence.

The past six weeks have gone by quickly. I had crashed early on the night of the 25th, after a busy week without much sleep, to wake up at around 9:45 a.m. on March 26th and catch the closing remarks of Harper announcing that he had dropped the writ. I saw the first campaign sign by 1:30 p.m. the same day, promoting the re-election of Conservative MP David Sweet who got his wish without much of a threat.

This election was my first federal election, though my first vote for a public official was the municipal election in Hamilton in late 2010. Nevertheless, there were plenty of firsts: attending a campaign rally and an all-candidate's debate, being in the audience of the prime minister, and joining a vote mob. Once exams ended, I was able to pay a lot more attention of the campaigns, watching the debates in full (well, at least the English one), emailing candidates, and blogging about issues that concerned me. Excluding this post, I wrote eleven notes, totalling 7610 words, not counting quotes, responses, and letters. The most used, non-common, words are shown on the right in a word cloud, generated at wordle.net.

I am not going to question the voting intentions of Canadians. I am, without a doubt, disappointed in the results, handing Harper a majority and seeing the fall of the Liberal Party. While the Grits goes searching for a new leader, hopefully more leader-like than the last two rounds, I'll say that I really like Michael Ignatieff for who he is. Perhaps he's not prime minister material, but I tend to admire the professor type, and it really takes something to tour the country, campaign without a teleprompter, take unscripted questions, and interact with Canadians, no matter how crazy. Assuming he does go back to teaching, I'd be more than happy to take one of his classes someday. It really takes two years of personal attack ads to give Canadians the impression that 30 years of living abroad as a journalist, writer, and  Harvard professor is a bad quality to have as prime minister.

As for the orange revolution, it's nice to see that Canadians, or perhaps mainly Quebeckers, want to see change. But note two things: 1) I see the today's 102-seat NDP as a "merger" of the political strengths of the former 36-seat NDP and the 49-seat Bloc. The leftist party now has an obligation to serve the interests of Quebec if it wishes to maintain support for a majority of its MPs. True, now the NDP is finally the official opposition, but it's important to remember that the 36-NDP had more political power with a minority Conservative government than any amount of seats with a Conservative majority. 2) This Conservative majority resulted mainly from gains in Southern Ontario, where vote splitting between the Liberals and the NDP played its most significant role. It's disappointing, but just like strategic voting, it's a part of our democratic system. Parliamentary reform has been talked about in this election: personally, I'm not in favour of a proportional representation system, i.e. voting just for a party, but I support the idea of preferential voting through a system based on instant-runoff voting.

Regarding our newest MPs, young minds are not necessarily bad. Especially with the NDP acting as opposition to a majority party, we are not placing much pressure on the students recently elected. I've already seen and read comments from two of the first year students (Pierre-Luc Dusseault | Laurin Liu), and despite their own personal surprise of getting a new job, they are genuinely taking responsibility of their duties and willing to put their full effort into the next four years. Knowing hard-working students and members of parliament, the students might be able to get more things done, and one of the things I look forward to most in the next Parliament will be finding out what these two MPs are learning.

We will go to the polls again on October 19, 2015 (assuming the majority doesn't collapse, the US hasn't invaded us, and the Mayans miscalculated). It's a long way away, but it'll ensure that the NDP have time to train their caucus, it'll give the Liberals time to rebuild, it'll give Quebec to rethink the need of a provincial party at a federal level, and it'll give the Greens a long while to cherish and enjoy their first elected seat. Harper will have all the time he needs to pass what he wishes. It's hard to imagine what [Harper's] Canada will be like in 2015. Without its long gun registry, party subsidies, and unbiased long-form census data, of course. Toronto would've hosted the Pam Am Games, hopefully opened by a different mayor. My sister, still in junior high, will be voting for her first time. Wow.