Post-election musings from Rick Mercer
Election day dust in Canada is slowly settling. Eventually the post-mortems will subside as well. But not quite yet.
It’s difficult to account for what just happened here and how big a shift it is. Pundits here are still mulling it over. Always-entertaining Rick Mercer gives us his take in this article from Maclean’s, appropriately entitled “How in God’s name do you explain?” with the catchy subtitle “In Canada, time spent at the massage parlour is a positive, at Harvard not so much”
Taken slightly out of order, here are two excerpts from Mercer on the outcome:
…the results are stunning. A Conservative majority, the rise of the NDP, the annihilation of the Bloc Québécois, the near death of the Liberals. We saw two national leaders get defeated and Elizabeth May win. In Quebec, a 19-year-old voted in his first federal election, for himself, and is now a newly elected NDP MP. Had he lost, he would have sought summer employment at a golf course.
For Canada’s major political parties, everything is vastly altered.
Liberals, even when in opposition, are always surprised when they meet someone who isn’t a liberal. They tend to believe everyone looks at the world the way they do, everyone is on the same team. Conservatives are the opposite. No matter how much success they achieve, they constantly believe someone is out to get them. Conservatives always believe they are swimming against the current, even when there is ample evidence to prove otherwise. This has served them well; it has allowed them to remain united and focused. The one ideological characteristic all Conservatives in Ottawa share is a complete loyalty to the authority of Stephen Harper and his quest for a majority. But along the way a lot of Conservatives have been told to sit down and shut up and wait for the big day. Now that it’s here, what now?
What now indeed? Majority rule in Canada is mighty, mighty thing. Now the nation gets to see what Prime Minister Harper will do with it.
Tags: canada, Federal election 2011, politics, Rick Mercer
