Stephen Harper proves he’s no Jean Chretien.
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With the left split into three parties (four counting the Bloc) – all with overlapping policies and often indecipherable ideologies – the current PM couldn’t muster a majority…For the third straight election!
Since 2004, the country has spent close to $1 billion on elections, and there’s almost certainly another vote to come in the next year-and-a-half. Each election has been triggered, single-handedly, by Harper.
Meanwhile, Toronto, arguably the most important city in the dominion, is crumbling by the day. Alberta is filled to the brim with poor, homeless, and transient workers. Montreal still shows hints of ready-to-erupt racial tension. This election did nothing to end any of that.
Toronto should already be a modern city with fresh infrastructure (the Gardiner, the Scarborough LRT and the waterfront are national embarrassments). Calgary is a hotbed for oil companies and there’s little reason it shouldn’t look like Dubai, instead of a giant parking lot for big box stores. Like these two cities, Canada has loads of potential seemingly without any desire to reach it.
Harper has also done nothing to improve Canada either. His conservative predecessors, Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark, had lofty ambitions of ending Quebec sovereignty and creating an amicable national energy plan, respectively. Harper has none of the ambitions for Canada shared by other prime ministers. He only has simple political goals, like pushing down the Liberals and getting a majority.
Beside that, Mulroney and Clark ran elections on their visions for the country. This election was about nothing. There was no singular issue at the onset of the campaign, and only by fluke did any leader start talking about the economy (and not really substantively so). There was no vote of confidence needed or given. Essentially, there was nothing to vote for.
Is it not fair to say the country is at political stalemate?
