It seems Harper's campaign team just did not have the right stuff to stop these stupid "fear" tactics by the Liberals.
The stupid thing about Ontario voters is they voted for the same very left leaning promises of the liberals but once in power the liberals always shift more to the right - may it be free trade or even debt reduction. The one thing I pray for is strong relations with the USA. I am sick and tired of liberal MPs calling Bush 43 a "bastard" etc.. I highly respect Bush43 and his efforts to protect his citizens and quite frankly, the Canadian citizens as well since we don't really have a serious military.
However, in Eastern Ontario (where I live) we managed to elect 7 conservatives. For the most part, these were old conservative seats that were held by liberals because of the split in the "right" over the last 10 years. With the uniting of the right, a lot of Eastern Ontario went back to the right.
A bright spot in a rather red province.
Overall though, I think Harper should be sitting very pretty by letting the liberals try and goovern for another year or so.
hawk
I assume this means another C$ million or two for the gun roundup scheme, eh ?
Let's be serious here...Toronto will NEVER be a Conservative stronghold. Not to be derogatory here, but it's basically a little Pakistan, little China, pick a country and you can bet there's more immigrants from there in the GTA than immigrants with Anglosaxon backgrounds. These people know nothing other than Liberal. They're sheep. They don't care what's good for Canada, as long as they get their free ride at my expense.
I could go further into this rant, but I don't want to say anything I'm going to regret.
As for the results of the election...the Liberals and NDP together only picked up *gasp* 154 seats (135 Liberal, 19 NDP). Not enough for a majority coalition. Now the Bloc won't help the Conservatives...but they won't help the Liberals either. The Conservatives picked up 99 seats, the Bloc 56 (which is a record for them if I remember correctly). The Liberal seats went about 50/50 to the right and left.
Stephen Harper said it best when he said that a Liberal minority supported by the NDP and backed by the Bloc would be "Corruption, Taxation, and Separation all the in the same Administration."
Paul Martin has too much "pride" to form a coalition with the NDP, espically if it doesn't give them a majority. There will be another election in 18 to 24 months. Somewhere in there, there's a Conservative policy convention, and plenty of time for the Conservatives to pick up ammo to use against the Liberals.