Welcome To The New Prime Minister, Same As The Old Prime Minister

Stephen Harper is officially our Prime Minsters once again. Based off my blog earlier today, I am sure you can hedge bets of how thrilled I am with this fact. The decrepit cherry on top of my shit sundae is that the Conservatives are now the majority government (the first majority government since 2004). This essentially means we won't have another election until 2015, which is good because I'm rather done with federal elections for now. It is also not what I had hoped, because now Harper is going to have a lot more fun in the sand box being able to push all his policies through since his party controls the majority of the seats. Clearly, this is what the country wanted (except for Quebec that did a massive switcheroo and voted in a majority NDP), and I'd assume a lot of that has to do with financially burdened individuals who are ready for a fairly frugal government. I believe we've got an interesting four years ahead of us, especially with what could end up happening in Quebec. The Bloc was completely obliterated in this election and is no longer an officially recognized national party due to getting less than 5 seats (at this point it looks like 2). The NDP is now the majority party representing Quebec but they're also a minority party compared the entire national landscape, which means Quebec is essentially not being represented by the federal government. It'll be interesting to see if this causes some long term complications and actually ends giving rise to more sovereign movements despite the sovereignist party being completely ousted. Speaking of ousted, not a very good day to be a Liberal party member as they took a spanking and were forced to like it.

An interesting election, even if it went completely opposite of what I had hoped. Now, we sit back and see if Harper follows through on all the things he promised would happen if he got a majority government. I'll say this, if the budget doesn't start to get balanced in the next few years and the economy doesn't rise across the nation, then they'll be a reckoning for the Conservatives since they won't have the "can't make the changes we want because none of the other parties will play nice." Because they don't need to worry about the other parties, now that they a ruling the roost and now it’s time to show some action.

Anyway, my one consolation is it looks like Elizabeth May got the first ever federal seat for the Green party, which is a very pleasant occurrence. It obviously can't amount to much right now, but it is all about the baby steps. This has to be considered a victory for the Green party considering the Green party got a raw deal during all the national coverage and major debates. Despite unfair treatment, this is a pretty good showing -- you knew they would get lesser votes this time around due to simply not having the proper coverage during this election.

That is my quick evening election thoughts, but I'm sure I'll have more to say in the coming weeks as we see how this particular government shapes up.