Long time since the last post. I have been on vacation. Then I got a job - the director of a small news department in a college radio station.

My last post was on April 29th. Since then, a blue tide has washed over Canada, completely to the surprise of most pundits and commentators. The problem with Canadian politics is that everybody goes into an election with the idea that they know how things are going to turn out: that nothing ever changes, and that nothing interesting is likely to happen this time around.

Well.

So we have now four-and-a-half years of Conservative Majority government to look forward to, with an NDP opposition. As much as I was overjoyed to see the NDP break the 100 seat mark, I was in shock over the majority. I was also flabbergasted (I love this word) to see the Bloc Quebecois eliminated, and the liberals reduced by half.

I think it's important to remember that the liberals in many of the lost ridings didn't loose by all that much. Some places it amounted to about a couple hundred votes. One riding, it was something like four votes that determined the outcome. However, in this first past the post system, it doesn't really matter that it was four votes or four thousand. They still lost.

So Iggy is gone, and Bob Rae is in as Liberal interim leader. Maybe this should have happened much earlier. The received wisdom here in Ontario is that that would have been a suicide move by the Liberals, because everyone in Ontario remembers when he was premier in the early 90s. But I wonder if it really would have been that big a deal. He could not have been worse than Iggy. Rae kept his seat in the election, which is more than you can say for Ignatieff. For that matter, so did Stephane Dion.

Let's say this for Rae - he's a seasoned politician, and very able man. He has political baggage in Ontario from twenty years ago, but that doesn't necessarily write him off as a leader. 

Now the Liberals are pissed that the NDP are evicting Ralph Goodale from his office in the centre block of parliament. Which means that they've been reduced to playing musical chairs, and being sore losers at it to boot.

To change subjects, I'm dismayed at the Harper majority. I am not looking forward to what he has planned for the next four years. While he said that he wasn't going to touch gay marriage or rights of women, I say all bets are off. He has a majority in the house and the senate (yes, that matters now), so he can basically do whatever he likes.