New Parliament, New Leaders?

[dapaterson]

As mentioned earlier, here's an essay I wrote the morning after the 1997 election, announcing the death of the Progressive Conservatives.  A few rough spots I'd re-work were I to do it again, but overall, I'm happy with how it turned out.  I'm not yet ready to write a similar eulogy for the Liberals; I think they still may be able to move back towards the centre.


Death of a Friend

June 3rd, 1997

I’ve had to say good-bye to an old friend.  It’s never easy, seeing them go from a robust, powerful force to a mere shadow of their former self, kept alive by only the most extraordinary of measures.  But now I must admit it: the Progressive Conservative Party is dead.

It’s difficult to believe that the party of Sir John A. Macdonald, of John Diefenbaker, even of Brian Mulroney is now in the throes of rigor mortis.  However, the election of a mere twenty Tory members of Parliament on June 2nd is the final nail in the coffin of one of Canada’s oldest political parties.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  Two consecutive terms of majority government under Mulroney, a feat last performed by Louis St Laurent some forty years earlier, should have brought in a new, dominant era for the Tories.  Their backrooms were filled with smoky conversations suggesting the Liberals had finally been displaced as Canada’s natural governing party.

But public distaste for the Mulroney government lead to the disastrous 1993 election, where the Tory campaign suffered from daily collapses and flip-flops.  Overnight, Kim Campbell went from being Canada’s first female Prime Minister to an unemployed political scientist.  And the descent began in earnest.  The Tory long knives last used against Joe Clark were brought back, with Campbell unceremoniously dumped for Jean Charest, one of two Tory MPs to survive the 1993 massacre.

Jean Charest spent the next three and a half years trying to rebuild the party.  No potluck supper was too small, no bus ride too long in his constant quest to shore up the fading Tory fortunes.  Criss-crossing the country, rousing dispirited members: these were the jobs of Jean Charest.

In 1995, Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s mishandling of Quebec’s referendum rocketed Jean Charest to national prominence.  He became the voice of federalism in Quebec.  Even Chretien’s fit of pique, cutting off Charest’s speech following the narrowest of victories, couldn’t diminish the accomplishment.  Jean Charest became Canada’s favourite political leader, and Quebec’s favourite federalist voice.

But this was all for naught.  The same Tory strategists who lead the party from a majority government to obscurity brought forward two more self-destructive strategies for the 1997 campaign.  First, they shifted party policy to the right to compete with the Reform party. This pushed offstage the left-of-centre “Red” Tories, who could otherwise have appealed to disenchanted Liberal supporters.  Second, in a desperate attempt to distance the party from its two most recent terms in office, they sold voters Jean Charest instead of the party, referring only in small print to the PC Party, trying to distance themselves from the hated Mulroney Progressive Conservatives.

The 1997 election results were an unmitigated disaster for the Tories.  Their gains in Atlantic Canada came from previously Liberal ridings repudiating the right-wing economic policies of the ruling Liberal party.  Their move to the right was ignored in the vote rich regions of Ontario and the West, areas crucial to the survival of the party.  Selling the leader rather than the party means all the work of the ‘97 campaign will be lost when Jean Charest leaves federal politics in the next few years.  The Tories will thus be left with no identity, nor policy, nor leader.

Canada used to be a nation of two founding political parties.  Today the Liberal Party is all that remains.  As for the Progressive Conservatives?  Requiescat in Pacem.

 

[Rodahn]

The one thing going for the Liberals is going to be the depression of the population in a few years.

Right now we have an Economic Crisis, the CPC is holding steady, this is comfortable to the population......but like normal people, the population as a whole will want to go out and spend once they are sure nothing bad will happen. The Liberals are great at thinking up ways for the population to feel it is spending without really spending. (eg: Universal DayCare, kelowna Accord, Universal Pharmacare....I know, I know, they all cost out far more than we can afford,) the Liberals are generally able to get enough people on the bandwagon to laud them loudly and clearly that this SHOULD be a UNIVERSAL RIGHT!!

GAP; 

Not sure if I'm reading the above correctly.

But I think that you should remember that it was a Liberal government that started producing a balanced budget and surplus' after the mess the Mulroney conservatives got us into. The past Conservative Government has/had a surplus of $2 billion, (approx according to the last announcement) in comparison to the previous Liberal governments $11 billion.

To me that would suggest that the Liberals fiscally, are more responsible.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Whoa.  Stop right there.

Firstly, it was the Trudeau Liberals who "got us into this mess", not the Mulroney Conservatives.  While Mulroney ran 40 Billion deficits, he was headed in the right direction.  Chretien accomplished surpluses by off-loading the Federal Deficit onto Alberta, Ontario and BC.

It should also be noted that running 11 Billion/year surpluses means that 11 Billion/year of your and my money is being taxed, IN EXCESS of what is required to run the Government.

If you think that the Federal Government can do a better job than you can of spending your own money, feel free to write CRA a cheque for an extra $1000.00 at tax time...

 

[Rodahn]

Whoa.  Stop right there.

Firstly, it was the Trudeau Liberals who "got us into this mess", not the Mulroney Conservatives.  While Mulroney ran 40 Billion deficits, he was headed in the right direction.  Chretien accomplished surpluses by off-loading the Federal Deficit onto Alberta, Ontario and BC.

It should also be noted that running 11 Billion/year surpluses means that 11 Billion/year of your and my money is being taxed, IN EXCESS of what is required to run the Government.

If you think that the Federal Government can do a better job than you can of spending your own money, feel free to write CRA a cheque for an extra $1000.00 at tax time...

Sorry Seaking, but your numbers just don't add up. Using your figures, the Mulroney government through it's eight years in office accumulated $320 billion in deficit. Granted some of the deficit is due to the  Trudeau era, the majority (again using your figures) is based upon the Mulroney rule.

I agree that government should not over nor under spend, however the cost of servicing the current deficit is I think about 25% of every dollar that you and I pay in taxes. Therefore reducing the deficit is very much in the the Canadian public's interest.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
But I think that you should remember that it was a Liberal government that started producing a balanced budget and surplus' after the mess the Mulroney conservatives got us into.
...

To add to SeaKingTaco's entirely correct assessment: the Conservatives balanced the programme budget when Mike Wilson was still Finance Minister. They (Mulroney, actually) lacked the political courage to go the next step and "make the rich pay" by re-jigging the equalization system to, effectively, rob Alberta, BC and Ontario to pay for everything and still run a surplus. The Liberals had no such problem with political courage or conscience and did what was necessary. The work is not done, though as we still pay $33 Billion + in public debt charges (See Table 2.3here.)

 

[Edward Campbell]

I would suggest that his staying on as Liberal leader is a combination of two things; the lack of money in the Liberal War Chests at the moment to finance another Leadership Convention, and the desire to retire with a very good Pension.  What is the Pension like for a Party Leader, and how many years does it take to accumulate the "points", as Leader, to have a larger pension than the everyday Member of Parliament?

Actually, Dion can use the leader’s office to:

• Help with is own big, personal ($200,000) fundraising chore. He must raise that by end 2009 to pay off his costs from the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign. He needs to do that before he starts raising any money for the Liberal Party of Canada; and

• Help or hurt leadership candidates by e.g. appointing some to highly desirable front bench critic positions and appointing others to more difficult or less desirable posts.

 

[GAP]

GAP; 

Not sure if I'm reading the above correctly.

But I think that you should remember that it was a Liberal government that started producing a balanced budget and surplus' after the mess the Mulroney conservatives got us into. The past Conservative Government has/had a surplus of $2 billion, (approx according to the last announcement) in comparison to the previous Liberal governments $11 billion.

To me that would suggest that the Liberals fiscally, are more responsible.

Wrong....as has been pointed out by others far more adept than I.

I lived through those Trudeau years as a taxpayer along with many others, and it was Trudeau and only Trudeau that started the high deficits.....

Mulroney, the first few budgets, continued, then when public opinion and other things turned south, he and Michael Wilson started cutting back. ER explained it best.

The liberals in 93 simply hacked and slashed to the point provinces could not pick up any more slack and it slid down to the people. Those were lean years for anybody in the workforce.

Chretien and Martin didn't take care of the people through their expertise and management....they simply cut and taxed to the point they didn't have to, then taxed some more to give healthy surpluses, that when added on to the increased income of a rebounding economy, made them the darlings that would give you what you wanted come election time.....A lot of Liberals still think in that mindset.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

+1 GAP. I'd rather the gov't run near the line. That to me, shows they know what their doing. The liebrals, plain and simple, stole uneeded money from the taxpayer to create the huge surpluses and pat themselves on the back. Typical robber barons.

 

[dapaterson]

To be fair, large surpluses today mean paying down the debt, which reduces outyear interest charges.  If the economy can bear some additional pressure, repaying debt when times are good is prudent fiscal management - but that also implies that when times are bad, it may be warranted to run a deficit.

 

[GAP]

I would agree with maintaining some of the high taxation to pay down the debt.....in 2 1/2 years the CPC paid down 40 Billion, verse the Liberals paying down 17 Billion (I think) in their last four years....The interest $$ we save is phenomenal.....and it's ours.

 

[2 Cdo]

  Chretien accomplished surpluses by off-loading the Federal Deficit onto Alberta, Ontario and BC.

It should also be noted that running 11 Billion/year surpluses means that 11 Billion/year of your and my money is being taxed, IN EXCESS of what is required to run the Government.

It is easy to balance a budget if you get someone else to foot the bills. Your last statement nails it for me. Surpluses means we the taxpayer have been over-charged, end of story.

 

[Old Sweat]

Remember that Chretien et al did not come to power in 1993 on a platform of balancing the budget and eventually paying down the debt. As I recall the Red Book, the promise was to reduce the annual deficit to 3% of GDP. It was not until the awful truth sunk in circa 1995 that the drastic cuts in spending were made and the budget was balanced. Even then, the cuts were made to transfers to the provinces and in the non-touchy feelly departments like DND, the Sol Gen and National Revenue. There also was a freeze of government wages. This allowed program spending in social services to continue and even grow.

To suggest that the Liberals came to power with the aim of putting our fiscal house in order is wrong, wrong, wrong. They also took the easy route to balancing the budget by slashing things that they believed would not harm their popularity.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I attended an event, yesterday, at which John Manley spoke, I only had a chance to exchange a few sentences with him, but, my guesstimate is: Yes, he’s interested, but raising both money and support from a left-leaning base will be very, very hard for him and for Frank McKenna, too. I’m also guessing that he will not run unless he has a very good chance of winning and he will make that assessment quite early. Therefore, I would not be surprised if he sits this one out and, de facto retires from partisan politics.

Ten years ago money would not have been a problem: the Liberal Party of Canada was, always, the party of big money, big business, BIG banks and big labour – money, bags of money, went to those endorsed by the Mr. Bigs and today that would be, in no particular order, Inatieff, Manley, McKenna and, maybe, Rae (who will likely have Paul Desmarais’ support thanks to his brother John Rae who is a VP at Power Corp). Chrétien changed all that for reasons that I find hard to fathom.

The party ‘base’ – those committed Liberals who work “in the trenches” in good times and bad - has changed. It has shifted far away from the centrist base of the St Laurent/Pearson era (20 years from 48 to 67) and has, now, a left wing base created by Pierre Trudeau and nourished by Jean Chrétien – despite the fact that he (Chrétien) was a very conservative fellow.

Chrétien moved the party leftwards because he thought that he no longer needed to placate the Liberal ‘right’ thanks to the PC/Reform split. He felt secure enough to be able to ignore the Graham/Manley/Martin/McKenna wing and to use Canadians’ innate (albeit juvenile) anti-Americanism and soft-socialism to try to take voters away from the NDP. He misjudged. Harper and McKay reunited the right faster and more firmly than Chrétien thought possible and the NDP faithful saw through him.

Without rehashing the history of the Liberals’ internecine wars, Ignatieff, like Manley, will have serious trouble with the base; Rae will have trouble with some of the ‘leaders;’ Kennedy will have Dion’s visible support, I think and I’ll guess that Dion will give him a nice, high profile critic’s job that will allow him to polish his image on TV every day – attacking harper and the Tories in areas where they are vulnerable. Ignatieff and Rae, I’m guessing, will be stuck with portfolios for which Canadians have little affection – defence and foreign affairs, or little interest - such as industry and trade.

It will be interesting to see who shadows Flaherty in Finance (I’m assuming he stays there). The Liberals have to be careful there. They will have to walk a fine line between the BQ and NDP who will be screaming an whinging for handouts for Main Street and the media who will blast them for anything that looks even remotely irresponsible but who will also blast them for being ‘too close’ to the Tories. If it was me I would appoint Ralph Goodale.

If I was a betting man I might bet on Dominic LeBlanc.

 

[dapaterson]

LeBlanc would be an interesting choice- but begs the question whether an Acadian counts as an English Leader or a French one.  I suspect we'll see the alternation continue this time, with an English leader selected .  Which of course opens the door on the next go 'round for the Dauphin to ascend to his throne.

 

[a_majoor]

Obviously, everyone is going to weigh in with free advice, especially since the economic crisis is (or should be) changing all underlying assumptions. Here is a call to shift dramatically to the right. While I agree in principle, I am not sure that this is feasible in practice without some compelling "cover". Using the economic crisis and global unwinding of debt *might* be an opportunity to eliminate business income tax in Canada as a non inflationary means of providing liquidity and maintaining productivity and jobs, for example.

On the other hand, the reaction that a rather paltry $40 some million cut to the Federal Budget elicited, or the ongoing fear of tackling issues like the abuse Human Rights Commissions do to free speech would seem to mean that reaching for real change might be a poisioned chalice

http://www.canada.com/opinion/story.html?id=896579

Time for Tories to drop incrementalism
Gerry Nicholls ,  National Post
Published: Tuesday, October 21, 2008

With Stephane Dion shuffling off the political stage, the Conservative government must now come to grips with a new enemy. And I am not talking about Bob Rae or Margaret Atwood or a hostile left-wing media. The new enemy for the Conservatives is time; simply put they are running out of it.

Realistically speaking the Conservatives will be able to effectively govern this country for perhaps one more year. After that a revitalized Liberal party led by a shiny new leader, whose name isn't Stephane Dion, will start to gum up the government's Parliamentary agenda and perhaps even force an election. And because the Conservatives are running out of time, they have no choice but to abandon the grand political strategy they have been employing for the past two and half years.

This strategy is usually referred to as "incrementalism." The chief proponent of incrementalism is former Conservative campaign manager Tom Flanagan and it's essentially based on the idea that the Canadian public doesn't really like conservative ideas or conservative polices.

Hence, according to Flanagan, if a Conservative government actually tried to feed the Canadian public a true conservative agenda the public would start to choke and this would necessitate some sort of gigantic national Heimlich manoeuvre.

To prevent this from happening, Flanagan and his incremantalist followers argue, the only way to introduce conservatism in Canada is for the government to feed it to the public in tiny little itsy-bitsy bites --bites so tiny you would need a microscope to see them. This is what I call a good news, bad news theory. The good news about this "go slow" incremental approach is it would indeed succeed in creating a conservative Canada; the bad news is it would take about 5,000 years.

And as already noted the government has considerably less than 5,000 years to implement an agenda. In other words, there is not enough time for conservative incrementalism. If the government truly wants to bring about conservative policies it must act quickly.

That means the Conservatives must soon do one or more of the following: cut taxes, make government smaller, reduce government spending, promote and protect individual freedoms. To put it another way, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to put away his sweater-vest and stop trying to convince Canadians he is a warm and fuzzy guy. Instead he must start inspiring people with a conservative vision, a vision that's an alternative to the tax-and-spend policies of the NDP and Liberals.

Who knows, maybe if he implemented a true conservative agenda, Prime Minister Harper might even win his coveted majority government in the next election. Then again, maybe he won't. But at least he would have accomplished something while in power.

And isn't that what politics is really supposed to be all about? It's got to mean more than just winning elections or holding onto power for the sake of holding onto power. That's how Liberals think. For conservatives, at least, politics should be about making Canada a freer and better place.

I realize, of course, that pushing a true conservative agenda would not be easy for the government. The easy thing to do would be to continue with the incremental approach and follow the path of least resistance. But taking the path of least resistance is not leadership.

Nor is it leadership to blindly following the dictates of public opinion polls or to abandon policies whenever a special interest group whines or to shamelessly pander to a particular province. A true leader stands for certain principles and then convinces others to support those principles.

Margaret Thatcher was a leader. Ronald Reagan was leader. In the last election, the Conservative party kept telling us Stephen Harper was a leader.

It's time he proved it. - Gerry Nicholls is a freelance political consultant www.gerrynicholls.com.This column is adapted from remarks delivered at a recent Fraser Institute-sponsored event.


© National Post 2008

 

[Kirkhill]

Apparently we have right wingers craving leadership.  Or is this rather a case of someone who wants to lead but doesn't seen inclined to risk it himself?

Correct me if I'm wrong but were there any CPC ads hyping Harper as Leader?  I recall the CPC saying Dion was NOT a leader.  I recall NDP ads accusing Harper of being a Strong Leader. 

But I don't recall a Tory "Harper-Leader" meme.

 

[Edward Campbell]

If, as he self describes, Gerry Nicholls is “one of Canada’s top five political minds,” then one must hope and pray that the other four have something, anything, useful in them because if Nicholls shakes his head the rattling noise will wake the dead.

The Liberals are not going to revitalize themselves in a year – it will take three, five, even ten before they are ready and able to govern again.

Tom Flanagan and Stephen Harper are right, and Nicholls is dangerously wrong: Canadians do not want a ‘conservative’ Canada and offering them one is the one sure way to revitalize the Liberals quickly.

Nicholls says, correctly, that Harper must: ”cut taxes, make government smaller, reduce government spending, promote and protect individual freedoms.” I don’t think to many people argue with too many of those aims. But, Nicholls – “one of Canada’s top five political minds, remember – then goes on to say that Harper must stop being ‘nice’ (as ‘nice’ as he can be, anyway) and become some sort of inspiring leader. Please, please gods - small and mighty, send out the other four “top political minds!”

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Just to go with the post on the eulogy for the Progressive Conservatives from 1997, I would offer that the party that Sir John A MacDonald founded had already died decades  prior.  This merger of the Progressives with the Conservatives in 1942 to form the Progressive Conservatives gives an illustration of how Canadian politics work.  The old-school Conservatives faced a crisis when rural farmers, with many from Western Canada, splintered off from the Conservatives after World War 1 to the Progressive Party.  The Conservatives were reduced to a fairly minor status in the house for a bit.  The rift was healed when a former leader of the Progessives came to be the Conservatives and the party was renamed the Progressive Conservatives.

The Western (and rural) vote split off again with Reform/Alliance in the 90s, making Liberal majorities a certainty for a time.  The rift was healed again and a new name came about.  Finding a balance that can appeal to the regions and the centre at the same time is certainly difficult. 


 

 

[Jed]

So if we get a combination of a strengthening BQ, with Danny Williams pushing the ABC concept and Taliban Jack grabbing the lefty vote; will we see a resurgence of the Western Canada Concept agenda?

 

[a_majoor]

A view from the United States. The long term prognosis (Conservatives will be badly damaged by the coming economic hard times) is hardly "news", but nevertheless true (even if you and I know that Liberal/NDP/Green policies would have made things far worse, that is in the realm of "what if" while the cold hard truth of the real government's record is there for everyone to see).

Like Gerry Nicholls, I am moving more firmly to the idea that now is the time to take some radical steps, but not for narrow partisan purposes but because we really need to do something very different to weather the economic storm. Grounding the Titanic on the iceberg really isn't going to save us....

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810u/canada-election

North America's Other Election

Canada has weathered the global economic crisis with noteworthy grace. Last month, its economy created over 100,000 new jobs, more than in any month in decades. Wages keep growing, and Canada's banking sector is, according to the World Economic Forum, "the soundest in the world." So it shouldn't be surprising that last week, Canadians returned Stephen Harper's Conservatives to power and granted them 19 new seats in Parliament. Harper called the election because he thought he could win it. But the five-week campaign featured wild oscillations—and offered a few glimpses of Canada's fragmented future.

Early on, the Conservatives looked like they might win a majority by expanding their share of the vote in francophone Quebec. The wooing of Quebec's so-called soft nationalists has been at the heart of Conservative electoral strategy since the party's birth in 2003, when the Progressive Conservatives merged with the western-centered Canadian Alliance. Before the early 1990s, Quebec voters who wanted autonomy from Ottawa tended to vote for the Progressive Conservatives. Those who embraced a strong federal government backed the Liberals. But the constitutional crisis of the early 1990s forced a polarization of Quebec's electorate: either you were for a united Canada or against it, which meant that you were either for the federalist Liberals, or for the separatist Bloc Québécois. The politics of the middle way were dead, and the fortunes of the conservative parties in Quebec died with it.

The failure and exhaustion of Quebec's sovereignty movement presented an opportunity for a return of the middle way, and Harper shrewdly seized it. In 2006, the Conservatives won 10 seats in Quebec, far more than anyone had anticipated. Since then, Harper has explicitly referred to Quebec nationhood, and he has sought to raise its profile in international bodies like UNESCO, a clear gesture in the direction of soft nationalists. The Conservatives have also channeled considerable resources to the province. All the same, the Conservatives failed to increase their seat total. Quebec voters still turned to the Bloc Quebecois en masse, even though enthusiasm for Quebec sovereignty remains low.

The Canadian media have pointed to the Conservative government's decision to cut arts funding as well as a number of harsh anti-crime measures as the reason for their dismal showing. But there was much more to it. First, Canada's war in Afghanistan has killed nearly 100 Canadians and is deeply unpopular in Quebec. By pledging to withdraw Canadian forces in 2011, Harper built a consensus with the Liberals and neutralized the issue in most of the country—but not in Quebec. The Bloc wants Canadian troops out of Afghanistan now. Also, the New Democratic Party, which has struggled for decades to displace the Liberals as Canada's party of the left, ran very effective anti-Harper advertisements in Quebec in the hopes of building a beachhead there. But the ads redounded to the benefit of the Bloc instead, both because there was no real prospect of major NDP victories in Quebec and because Quebec voters tend to be, frankly speaking, very tribal.

Quebec aside, there were a few other aspects of Canada's federal election that have resonance for those of us following the American political scene. In Ontario and British Columbia, the Conservatives performed extremely well, thanks in part to a below-the-radar ethnic outreach effort. Whereas the Conservatives had been all but shut out of Canada's biggest metropolitan areas in the last election, the party won a number of unexpected victories in the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver, and came close in several more seats. Asian Canadians, and in particular Chinese, Filipino, and Korean voters, chose the Conservatives by wide margins across the country, a trend that bodes well for the party's future. (This is in marked contrast to the U.S. Republican Party's failure to break out beyond its increasingly narrow ethnic base, a failure that will likely tilt states like Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia into the Democratic column.) More significant was the shift of middle-class married women in Ontario and British Columbia into the Conservative column, doubtless a response to Harper's very effective tax-credit pandering. Like Bush's Republican Party, the Conservatives have expanded their coalition by appealing to working class voters, but they've mainly done it by using targeted tax policies, like the Clinton-era Democrats.

In the middle of the campaign, Harper and other leading Conservatives created a panic within the party with a series of hamfisted remarks. And although the financial crisis hasn't hit Canada directly, it has certainly created anxiety. Briefly, the Liberals and New Democrats seemed capable of forming a coalition on the strength of Harper's failure to feel the pain of Canada's middle-class families. But on the 14th, the day after Canadian Thanksgiving, those middle-class families turned to Harper as a safe pair of hands. It didn't help that the central feature of the Liberal domestic policy, a carbon tax, was essentially demagogued to death by Conservative candidates across the country. It is easy to imagine Republicans doing the same to a sweeping Democratic environmental plan.

Right now, Liberals see their meager showing—just 26 percent of the vote, one of the worst outcomes in the history of the party—as a serious reversal. At the same time, the Liberals won't be held responsible for the wrenching economic conditions to come. Assuming there is a severe downturn, the Conservative government will be forced into a budget deficit, a serious taboo in Canadian federal politics. The Liberals will eventually find a leader more appealing and charismatic than Stéphane Dion, and when they do, the party will surely make a comeback, not least because the 7 percent won by the flavor-of-the-month Green Party will dwindle to zero.

At the moment, left-leaning Canadians are suffering from a severe case of Obama envy. The Liberals are desperate for a Trudeau-like figure who can present a dashing, cosmopolitan face to the wider world. Stephane Dion is not that man. Michael Ignatieff, the celebrated intellectual and human rights activist and Liberal MP, just might be. After a disappointing and somewhat clumsy start, Ignatieff has proved a fast learner and a keen campaigner. He will, however, having a hard time fending off his old friend and classmate Bob Rae, the former NDP premier of Ontario who has inherited much of Jean Chrétien's old political machine.

All this is to say that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have an unenviable task of governing ahead of them, and possibly a tough election as well. This minority government bears an eerie resemblance to Joe Clark's Progressive Conservative win in 1979, when for just ten months he led a large minority government that had minimal Quebec representation. Clark mistakenly believed that he had a strong mandate, and he united the fractious opposition parties against him. Stephen Harper may well do the same.

Reihan Salam is an Atlantic associate editor and the co-author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008).