Canada re-elects Conservatives amid credit crisis
15 October 2008 14:52 [Source: ICIS news]
TORONTO (ICIS news)--Canadians, as expected, re-elected the ruling Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was preparing on Wednesday to form his second straight minority government as the country copes with the challenges of the global financial crisis.
In the first election in a G7 country amid the crisis, the Conservatives won 17 seats to reach 143 in the federal Parliament in Ottawa - obtaining 38% of the popular vote - according to preliminary results.
While the results were not an overwhelming mandate for Harper, Canadians did not risk a change to the main Liberal opposition party as the crisis took its toll on the country’s economy and stock market in past weeks, commentators said.
The Liberals under former environment minister Stephane Dion put forward a platform centred on an ambitious “green shift” that called for a carbon tax while reducing income taxes, a theme that quickly lost relevance for voters as the turmoil on financial markets hit home in the short five-week election campaign.
The Liberals lost 22 seats and are left with 77, the leftist National Democratic Party (NDP) won 6 seats and now has 37, and the Bloc Quebecois won 1 seat to obtain 49 in the new Parliament.
The Green Party won 7% of the popular vote but did not win a single seat under Canada’s “first-past-the-post” election system.
Political commentators said that despite the gains the results were a disappointment for Harper who had hoped to win a majority government.
The Conservatives won 10 seats in Ontario even though they have been heavily criticised for allegedly not doing enough to help that province’s battered manufacturing sector which has been hit by high energy costs, a strong Canadian dollar, weak demand in US export markets and now the financial crisis.
However, they performed weaker than expected in Quebec where Harper worked hard to win seats from the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec regional party that advocates the separation of Quebec from Canada, to clinch a majority.
Theoretically, the three opposition parties, which all favour strong environmental policies, could now form a coalition government to thwart Harper.
However, that is highly unlikely in the Canadian political context as the Liberals and the NDP are unwilling to ally themselves with the Bloc and its separatist ambitions.
Nor is it likely that the opposition parties would unite to bring Harper down to trigger another election soon. Harper’s first minority government held on to power for almost three years since 2006 before he called the election in September.
Dion, for his part, pledged that the Liberals would support the government to “make Parliament work” as it copes with the fallout of the economic and the financial crisis.
It remained unclear if Dion will stay on as Liberal leader.
Should he step aside the front-runners to succeed him are Michael Ignatieff, a former academic at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Toronto, and Bob Rae, a former NDP premier of Ontario who later joined the Liberals.
A spokesperson for Canadian Chemical Producers Association (CCPA) did not immediately return a call requesting comment on the impacts of the results for Canadian chemical producers.
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Author: Stefan Baumgarten+1 713 525 2653
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