There are many wonderful readers of Babel-on-the-Bay. The other day one of our stalwarts sent an e-mail saying how warming it was to read that the Harper government is toast. Obviously some of the Conservative readers caught a bit of a chill in the words but so far nobody has argued. The best news is that Babel-on-the-Bay’s Morning Line forecast is falling into place. With just eight days until voters can start to give their opinion, the election is about to produce the expected result.
Despite the statistical possibility that the Conservatives could win the largest number of seats on October 20, it certainly could not be a majority. And without a majority, the opposition parties would never allow a Stephen Harper government to survive. The Governor General, sooner or later, would have to call on the largest opposition party to see if that party could win the confidence of the House of Commons. While Stephen Harper would probably have the funds left over to face another election, the two major opposition parties would call for a respite of at least a couple years.
The Liberal Party is on the up-swing. Even without the huge national television audience and the technical problems with the translations at Roy Thomson Hall, Justin Trudeau was the clear winner in the foreign affairs debate. He not only held his own but he made a strong pitch to Canada’s progressives that he knows where Canada wants to go and he knows how to get there. Anyone who has not seen a video clip of his argument with Harper that a Canadian is a Canadian is probably not a voter.
But that foreign affairs debate was New Democrat Thomas Mulcair’s to lose and he did. He was beset by his two opponents and lost to them. He came across as stuffy and belligerent. That is not the Prime Minister that Canadian’s want.
And to make matters worse for him in Quebec, the previous Montreal French-language debate did not do Mulcair any good. That debate allowed Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois to take on the New Democrats who had ravaged his party in 2011. Duceppe targeted Mulcair and by the end of the debate, the orange wave seemed barely a trickle.
If Justin Trudeau’s stock continues to rise with Canada’s progressive voters, the Liberals are within range of 150 seats in the next House of Commons. The Conservatives may be showing some life still and will reach for straws in the final weeks. They staged this terribly long election. They tried to wear Canadians down. It did not work.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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