McMartin's Very Own Winners and Losers

It's been said of children's organized sports that "everybody scores and nobody loses." It's a lot different in politics, where winners and losers are evident for all to see. Here's a compilation of the successes and failures from Canada's 40th federal general election.

THE VICTORS

Stephen Harper. For some unfathomable reason, nearly all of the election-night, news-media pundits claimed that Harper was probably disappointed his Conservatives did not win a majority government. That's silly; with 143 MPs, the Tories have far more parliamentary seats than any two opposition parties combined, which means that the Liberals (76 seats), Bloc (50) and NDP (37) all must agree at some future date to join together and defeat the government.

How likely is it that all three opposition parties -- at the same time -- will find it to their own benefit to knock off the Tories? Not very, because no opposition party will join the others unless its MPs believe that doing so will improve their own parliamentary position after another general election.

Put another way, at some future date, public opinion polls will have to convincingly show that the Liberals will win an election and form the government, and that the Bloc and New Democrats both will gain new seats, before the three will act in concert to dissolve Parliament. However, if the polls show one or more parties trailing the others, it's unlikely they'd be willing to pull the trigger.

Nope, Harper heads a minority government that is nearly as good as a majority, and has clear sailing as prime minister for the next several years. Unless, of course, he sees the political benefit of dissolving parliament and calling an election at a time of his own choosing -- just as he did six weeks ago.

Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. The two Toronto-area Liberals handily won their own seats last night -- Ignatieff in Etobicoke-Lakeshore by a margin of about 5,700 votes, and Rae in Toronto Centre by a whopping 18,200 -- and both will contest the Liberal party leadership once Stephane Dion resigns. (Other Liberal leadership hopefuls who won re-election last night include Ruby Dhalla, Mark Holland and Dominic LeBlanc.)

Ignatieff and Rae were front-running contenders for the Liberal leadership nearly two years ago, but each carried personal baggage that allowed Dion to surpass them. For Ignatieff, who lived outside Canada for many years whilst a scholar at Oxford and Harvard, there was the question of his commitment to the country and the Liberal party. For Rae, the issue was his controversial (or, better still, disastrous) tenure as NDP premier of Ontario in the early 1990s.

Both men now hope that those concerns are behind them. Are they? The odds favour Ignatieff. Recall Winston Churchill's famed retort to Bessie Braddock, the Liverpool MP, after she observed that he was drunk. "Bessie, you're ugly," Churchill replied. "And tomorrow morning I'll be sober, but you'll still be ugly."

The longer Ignatieff serves as Liberal MP, the more distant become concerns that he is a carpet-bagging dilettante. Rae, on the other hand, will always be the former NDP premier of Ontario.

Justin Trudeau. One of the cruellest, and most accurate, observations ever made of a Canadian politician came from a veteran Liberal backroom strategist, who said that the eldest son of former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau and his B.C.-born wife, Margaret, "seems to have inherited his mother's brain as well as her looks."

Still, the young Trudeau last night won election as MP in the Montreal-area riding of Papineau, and will have as lengthy a political career as he chooses. He'll one day probably even run for the Liberal leadership, with enthusiastic support from the Toronto news media -- especially CBC Television and the Globe and Mail newspaper -- which already adore him. Lord help us.

Gilles Duceppe. Over the last five federal general elections prior to yesterday, the Bloc Quebecois won 54, 44, 38, 54 and 51 seats. Last night's BQ tally of 50, therefore, was in line with previous results. In other words, it was a mediocre performance by a mediocre leader.

A former hospital orderly, Duceppe has been Bloc leader for a decade now, and last year made an ill-fated, short-lived and embarrassing run to head the provincial Parti Quebecois (he quickly scurried back to Ottawa when PQ heavyweight Pauline Marois announced her own candidacy). It's not likely that he'll stay much longer as BQ leader, but the fact that Duceppe kept his caucus largely intact in yesterday's election means that his departure will be on his own timetable.

Quebec voters. They're smart. Although Harper was unable to pick up any new seats in the province, and actually lost one backbench Tory MP, all of his Quebec cabinet ministers -- yes, the ones who have a say in federal spending -- won re-election. How do you say "more lolly" and "more boodle" en Francais?

At the same time, the Liberals took 15 seats and were thereby encouraged to work even harder in wooing Quebec before the next general election. And the Bloc was kept as the big stick with which to beat le maudits anglais in Harper's cabinet for not spending sufficient taxpayers' monies in the province, or not granting greater provincial autonomy to the Quebec government. Brilliant!

Jack Layton. His campaign rhetoric is as old as dirt -- "the kitchen table over the boardroom table!"; "Main Street, not Bay Street!" -- and about as inspiring. It's hard not to see the New Democrats as a party of the past ("We invented Medicare!") rather than of the future, and one increasingly concentrated in low-income urban and remote ridings. But thanks to Stephane Dion's ruinous term as Liberal leader, Layton took the NDP to 37 seats -- an increase of eight over the last election, and the party's second-best showing in history.

Do the federal New Democrats have a future? Can they expand their electoral universe? Will they ever develop any new ideas? As with Harper and Duceppe, Layton did not get all he wanted on election night, but like them he also won that most precious of commodities -- more time. Now, what will he do with it?

THE VANQUISHED

Stephane Dion. A catastrophe. The only question is, will he quit as Liberal leader in the next several days or weeks, and thereby allow Ignatieff, Rae and others to get their campaigns running in time for the scheduled party convention in May 2009, or is he going to hang on to the bitter end and force that same convention to vote him out?

Either way, he'll cement his name in the history books, joining Edward Blake as the only other federal Liberal leader never to have served as prime minister.

Newfoundland voters. What on earth were you thinking? Sure, your premier, Danny Williams, has a grudge against Stephen Harper and encouraged you to vote ABC (Anybody But Conservatives), but why did you do it? Look at Quebec: they've got cabinet representation so as to secure loads of federal monies, plus a strong opposition to give the government heck for not spending enough. What have you got? Seven lonely opposition (six Liberals and one New Democrat) nobodies.

If Stephen Harper has a list of 10 priorities for his re-elected and strengthened government, wooing Newfoundland or listening to Newfoundland's concerns will be, what, 537? Prepare to be ignored.

Elizabeth May and Adriane Carr. The Green leader and her deputy have just made, respectively, their third and fifth failed attempts at winning either a parliamentary or legislative seat. Will either one ever win an election, or are both doomed to becoming Canadian Harold Stassens?

Fortunately, The Tyee has decided that beginning next spring we'll be offering a series of election campaign seminars. We recommend both of you sign up for Election Politics 101, "How to Select a Riding in which You Might Actually Have a Chance of Winning," and Ms. May, we suggest you take two additional courses.

One is EP 205, "How to Participate in a Televised Leaders Debate Without Yelling 'Stupid' or 'Fraud' at Your Opponents," and the other is EP 400, "How to Endorse Your Own Party's Candidates when Asked by the News Media, 'Who Should Canadians Vote For'?"

Yes, Elizabeth, the answer to the latter question is a single word, "Green." Why didn't you say it?

University of Victoria political scientists. There are some red faces around the UVic campus after Conservative MP and cabinet minister Gary Lunn recorded his fifth consecutive election victory in Saanich-Gulf Islands.

The UVic profs -- no, they'll not be identified here -- made bold predictions, widely disseminated by the news media, that Lunn would go down in flames to Liberal hopeful Briony Penn, who, coincidentally, also teaches at the University of Victoria.

The latest tally in Saanich-Gulf Islands: Lunn, 28,000 votes; Penn, 25,400. What was it that Plato once said? Oops?

Christy Clark. Our favourite ex-BC Liberal cabinet minister cum radio talk show host likely will not have fond remembrances of the 2008 federal general election. Yet, it was only a year ago (Oct. 4, to be precise), that her husband, Mark Marissen, was the subject of a saccharine profile in the Vancouver Sun, which fawningly called him "Vancouver's political wunderkind" and "one of the shrewdest political strategists in the country."

Sadly, Marissen today is known for foisting an inept, incomprehensible and ill-prepared leader on the once-mighty federal Liberal party, and masterminding an historic Grit election defeat. (The Sun article ended by claiming that "Marissen will likely come out of this smelling like one of those red roses in the lapel of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, his political hero." No, we're not going to name the columnist.)

Still, the 2008 federal election might have enhanced Christy's own reputation, if only her on-air banter with political guests wasn't as maladroit as Dion's attempts to explain the Green Shift. (At least he has the excuse that English is not his first language.)

It's hard to pick any single most-laughable moment from Christy's show over the past few weeks, but here's one. Greg Lyle, a well-known pollster (and former political operative for Gary Filmon's Tories in Manitoba, Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals as well as the federal Tories -- someone who, it must be said, knows politics as well as anyone in the country) was asked by Christy what his surveys told him about the election outcome.

To start, the Conservatives should win about 140 seats, said Lyle. Oh, Christy asked, you think they'll win a majority?

Pause. Er, not quite, Lyle replied.

Now, one might think that a former politician who has a radio program that features political discussion, and who is married to one of Canada's "shrewdest political strategists," would know the number of seats in the House of Commons (308) as well as the number required for a majority (155).

But, then again, maybe not. There's nothing like a hard-fought election to reveal those who know what they're doing, and those who don't.

Related Tyee stories:

• Election's Big Winners and Losers
  These get our votes. Please add your own.
• Is Canada Turning Conservative?
  What polling shows on a range of issues.
• Voting system distorted results once again: Fair Vote