My thoughts on the election (I know nobody asked, but humour me):
- Very happy the Liberals beat the Conservatives
- Disappointed the Liberals didn't get a majority. Normally, I actually prefer minority governments, because it helps to keep the government in check. However, in this particular case, with the threat from the Americans, I would have preferred the stability of a Liberal majority, just to know we'd be safe from non-confidence games and potential elections for the next four years.
- It looks like the main reason that the Liberals failed to get to a majority is because they underperformed to the polls in Ontario. So not really thrilled with us right now.
- Disappointed that the NDP lost official party status. That's tempered, of course, by the knowledge that the only reason we have a Liberal win right now is because of the NDP collapse. But I do wish they had eked out five more seats... at the expense of Conservatives.
- Very sad to see Singh resign as party leader. I get he didn't really have much of a choice. But I actually really like him, and don't get all the hate that people have thrown his way.
- I took a lot of very petty pleasure in Poilievre losing his seat. If he manages to stay on as leader, I know he'll just get parachuted in to some other safe riding, but I'm just enjoying it for now. I actually hope the party brings out the knives and sends him packing, and replaces him with someone more Progressive Conservative. (Could O'Toole have pulled off a victory this election if he was still leader? I think it's a possibility.)
- Really wished Jivani would have lost his seat too.
- And for something personally very disappointing that tempers the overall happy results: my riding elected a Conservative MP, which we had never done before in the history of the riding. (OK, that history only goes back to 1997, but still.) Before this election, we had been reliably NDP for two decades. Not very happy with this outcome.
evil thought - given the ndp is going to lose officlal party status, I wonder if the liberals might reach out and try and get some of them to jump ship.
Rather than try to poach a handful of NDP members, I'd personally like to see them form an actual coalition. I know the Conservatives would scream blue murder, but it would give the new coalition 176 seats, which gives them a small buffer, and you end up with a stable government for the next four or five years, and also would allow NDP MPs to sit on committees and such, which they currently can't do now without party status. I know we don't usually do coalitions in Canada, but it is an option in our system, and in this particular case, seems like it would be a win-win for both parts of the coalition. I hope that Carney is at least considering it.