steve kwan user experience designer

Coping with a Conservative minority

(January 24th, 2006 - 7:24PM)

I'm not sure what to make of the election results.

On one hand, my boy Jack Layton managed to pick up a lot of seats. That's a great step forward for the NDP. They probably won't win the next election, and probably not the election after that...but perhaps one day. If the Conservatives can rebound from obscurity to leadership in about ten years, it's possible for the NDP too.

But on the other hand, of course, we have our new Conservative government. I'm not horribly concerned this time around, because with a minority their power will be quite limited. I'm interested to see how well Harper can pull together all the opposing parties to get things done. My big concern is that in the next election, there may be a Conservative majority. If that happens, I'm afraid they'll push Canada a bit too far to the right.

So far, Stephen Harper has really disgusted me. His views are too fundamentalist, his promises are too lofty, and his efforts to overthrow our government seem more like a power grab than real concern for Canada. The country has spoken, and it seems they're willing to give him a try. I suppose it doesn't matter what I think at this point. I hope for the best.

The sad thing is, I no longer feel that I could never move to the United States. I always thought that Canada was different. I thought we were progressive, socialist and tolerant of others. I thought, perhaps naively, that these were principles any Canadian would respect. But on election day, 36% of the voters in this country proved me wrong.