Posted on 01/22/2006 8:12:40 PM PST by johnmecainrino
Liberals crossing fingers for razor-thin majority
RICHMOND, B.C. — Liberals enter Monday's election left hoping for a best-case scenario that would see them narrowly avert defeat and scrape by with a small minority government.
Paul Martin told a partisan crowd in British Columbia the province - where the Liberals hope to gain five seats - will decide whether his government gets re-elected.
Party strategists have pinpointed a list of about 115 ridings they believe they could win, a total that would still leave them at least 40 seats short of a majority in the House of Commons.
What might have been a grim prospect only weeks ago is now a fingers-crossing hope for a party entering its first election in 18 years as an underdog.
"The eyes of Canada are going to be on British Columbia tomorrow night - the election is going to be decided here," Martin told a boisterous crowd of B.C. Liberals.
"We have the numbers. We can stop (Conservative Leader) Stephen Harper."
If Martin goes down Monday, his defeat will come after an energetic 11th-hour sprint across the country.
A journey that began in Newfoundland three days earlier concluded with Martin strolling hand-in-hand with his wife, Sheila, along the Pacific shoreline Sunday.
The couple will head to vote in Martin's riding of LaSalle-Emard on Monday, following a few hours' sleep and a flight scheduled to have them back in Montreal around 3 a.m.
They will join their three sons and daughter-in-law to take in the election results from a suite in their downtown hotel room.
Then it's off to a banquet hall where Martin will address Liberal troops. If he loses, the question on everyone's lips will be whether Martin will use that concession speech to announce his retirement from politics.
But the prime minister refused to speculate about his own future and spent his final day on the hustings warning what could happen to the country under a Harper-led government.
It would be the end of the Liberals' proposed national day-care program - which the Tories would replace with a $1,200 child-care subsidy.
Harper has also said he would re-open negotiations on joining the U.S. missile-defence project and back away from both the Kyoto accord to curb greenhouse gases and a multibillion-dollar treaty with aboriginals.
Harper promised to replace those Liberal commitments with his own plans, but has offered few details.
The Liberals' best hope of retaining power now depends on a last-minute stampede of NDP and Green party supporters hoping to block Harper by voting Grit.
Martin's speeches in the campaign's final days have been aimed squarely at those voters, who helped the party keep enough seats to form a minority government in 2004.
"If you lend Jack Layton your vote, you will hand Stephen Harper your country," he said. "Canadians have to spend today and tomorrow thinking about it."
Canadians could be in store for nasty surprises because the Tories have not explained what programs they would cut to fill a $23 billion gap in their platform, Martin reiterated.
Harper says he would fill that gap by slowing down increases already promised by the Liberals. Martin pointed out that his opponents' platform never spells out where those reductions would occur.
"It was simply a return to the wing-a-prayer kind of forecasting I saw when I took over from the Tories in 1993 as finance minister," he said of his opponent's platform.
"And then ... (Harper) can't tell Canadians what he's going to do about (filling that gap)? That's a lack of accountability."
He also poked fun at Harper for clamping down on his own candidates throughout the campaign. Unscripted musings by socially conservative candidates were seen as a prime reason the Tories blew an early lead in the 2004 campaign.
"When Stephen Harper will not allow his candidates to talk to the press, then ask yourself what his definition of accountability is," Martin said, with his Vancouver-area candidates standing behind him.
Personally, I strongly prefer paper ballots to voting machines as they are far less prone to fraud and are easier to recount (plus they are immune to glitches).
So far, in Canada, dead liberals don't get to vote.
But martin has been seen associating with clinton, so who knows - that may be the next addition to the ole liberal bag of tricks.
NO, here in Canada we still use the primitive and difficult to misinterpret PAPER ballot, where you make an "X" in the box beside the name and party of your choice.
Funny thing about the system we use is that results are tabulated, checked, confirmed and recounted far more quickly, and with vastly smaller variances, than the "advanced, modern" systems in use in places like, say Florida 2000, or Washington state 2004.
Change is good, but hard copy is hard to alter......
If that happens, there is a chance Martin could form a coalition with the NDP to stay in power. Since he is from the party sitting in power, if the NDP join in a coalition, he would have 135 seats - enough for a Liberal/NDP coalition government. I don't know what it would take for Layton to agree to form a coalition, though. That would be the nightmare scenario. A minority government that has lurched farther to the left.
I agree with that being a possibility.
But the Liberals and NDP have a lot of bad blood between them. The question is whether both groups are capable of putting away the swords and cooperating with one another.
I hope for a Conservative majority today. Then we won't have to worry about that possibility.
CTV doing their last minute cheerleading for martin.
I so hope Harper wins. Missle defense is so very important. Not to mention, it would be humorous to see Canada ditch Kyoto.
The caravan of lawyers, left-wing election-process FUD-spreaders, and moveon.org provocateurs is already on its way.
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