Conservatives 124 seats

Liberals 103

NDP 29

BQ 51

 

Few people less than 200 showed up at his final farewell bash.. "Paul Martin the PM and his bad Liberal cabinet now, plus his advisers, close supporters, and the arrogant "Martinites" are now also gone, are history..." and "Funny how they too the Liberals rarely still do think they will reap what they sow, face real negative losses too".  It is  Martin's inner circle that now shoulders much of the blame for the Liberals' humbling fall from power. But that blame also should also be directed at the man who selected them and his disastrous reelection program.. and how can he even dare to remain even an poor  MP.

 

Almost 2/3 of all Canadians voted. The law and order platform clearly prevailed for the BQ, NDP, and the Conservatives and the Conservatives under S Harper will lead a likley short lived Minority goverment, that may not live the full 4 year term. The Conservatives won 10 unexpected seats in Quebec.. with 26 percent of the popular votes, and the Liberals lost 6 major seats in Quebec while in Ontario, the Liberals had 38 per cent of the vote compared to 35 per cent for the Conservatives.  Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver did not elect any Conservative MPs and as a result they will not have one federal cabinet Minister to represent them. The Law and order NDP Party increased their MP standings and holds a significant balance of power again. BQ won 51/75 seats in Quebec but  it did not get 50 percent of the popular votes  in Quebec. Paul Martin will not stay on as the leader of the Liberal party but he will stay on as an MP. Paul Martin had twice tried for a majority Liberal government and had failed at it. They the Liberals  will next still have to deal effectively with the past bad Liberals if they want to get reelected.

 

S Harper has reconfirmed his priorities of  a government that will always stand up and work in the interests of the people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. He firstly does support a peaceful one nation democracy and he will work with the other political parties.. " His top five stated priorities are 1 to cut the national sales tax, 2 cut waiting times in the public health system, 3 crack down on crime, 4 give all parents of preschoolers a child-care allowance, 5 and clean up what he calls government waste and corruption. Conservative S Harper has  even promised to give Quebec and Ontario more money to deal with the fiscal imbalances of the federal taxpayers money distributions too.

 

Noteworthy Election results

Svend Robinson NDP Defeated

Anne McLellan Liberal Defeated

Ethel Blondin-Andrew Liberal  defeated

Tony Ianno, Liberal defeated Families and Caregivers Minister

Lizza Frulla  Liberal  Defeated

Reg Alcock   Liberal Defeated

Pierre Petigrew Liberal Defeated

Toni Valeri  Liberal Defeated  Liberal Government House Leader

AILEEN CARROLL  Liberal  defeated

Roger Gallaway Liberal Defeated

Karetak-Lindell Liberal  undecided

Richard Mahoney Liberal defeated

Michael Ignatieff Liberal  Elected

 

Olivia Chow   NDP  Elected

Alexa McDonough  NDP Reelected

 

Many former Liberal cabinet ministers reelected

 

Dan McTeague  Liberal  Re-Elected

Wayne Easter  Liberal  Re-Elected

Lawrence MacAulay Liberal  Re-Elected

Judy Sgro Liberal  Re-Elected

Carolyn Bennett Liberal  Re-Elected

Joseph Volpe  Liberal Re-Elected

Belinda Stronach Liberal Re-Elected

Denis Coderre, Liberal  Re-Elected

John McCallum Liberal Re-Elected

David McGuinty Liberal Re-Elected

Ken Dryden Liberal  Re-Elected

Ujjal Dosannjh  Liberal Re-Elected

Andy Scott  Liberal  Re-Elected

Bill Graham Liberal Re-Elected

Jean Lapierre  Liberal Re-Elected

Ralph Goodale Liberal Re-Elected

Hedy Fry Liberal Re-Elected

National Post's Paul Marin Epithet -"The leader who didn't change  National Post   Tuesday, January 24, 2006  MONTREAL - Standing among the very few Liberals who bothered to come out to show their support for Paul Martin in his home riding last night, I couldn't help but think back to the last time I was in Montreal witnessing a little slice of political history. It was 10 months ago, and the Conservatives seemed to be falling apart at the seams. As the local media snorted contemptuously at the party's decision to hold its first national convention in a province where it was a non-factor, dissidents patrolled the convention floor's hallways campaigning against Stephen Harper while social conservatives handed out anti-Charter buttons. Deputy leader Peter MacKay was openly picking fights with Harper while his equally ambitious girlfriend, Belinda Stronach, threw a lavish party designed to upstage the rest of the weekend's events. Through it all, Martin's cadre of advisors were having a good laugh. What they didn't realize was that the Tories had one big advantage: They were capable of learning from their mistakes. And that weekend was their turning point. It started with pulling back from the brink midway through the convention -- everyone making nice while delegates voted for a moderate package of policies that helped the party shed its extremist tag. But it was what happened to their leader afterward that made the biggest difference. Accused of running an unprofessional shop, he made wholesale changes to his office -- from firing his communications team to hiring a new chief of staff. Accused of being a poor team player, he learned to delegate. Accused of being too angry, he learned to smile. The ability to embrace change set Harper apart from his Liberal counterpart. When he solemnly promised last election night to "do better" because Canadians "expect more from us," it was mistakenly assumed that Martin realized his own performance had been lacking. We now know it was just another veiled shot at his predecessor. Even having been reduced to a minority government, the Martinites had no concept that they'd had a middling first few months in office, that shallow rhetoric didn't amount to a coherent vision and that their party was suffering from years of internecine warfare that they'd initiated. In their fantasy-land version of events, Martin had heroically overcome Jean Chretien's sins. Incredibly, the Martinites had an even more triumphalist reaction a year later, when their foundering government was rescued only by an unsavoury bit of floor-crossing. On the night their government held on by a tied vote in the House of Commons, they should have been contemplating how to turn things around. Instead, they threw themselves a raucous party at which the prime minister's chief of staff danced atop a table with Stronach herself. And so the Martin Liberals came to this election exactly as they came to the last one -- with a lacklustre policy record and a campaign strategy that revolved entirely around demonizing Harper. When the new and improved Tory leader was unveiled, it became clear that only one party had been treading water.  It will be Martin's inner circle that will shoulder much of the blame for the Liberals' humbling fall from power. But that blame should be directed at the man who accepted their mediocrity. After years of rallying around their leader, one gets the sense that even most Liberals now know that. Sure, there were the usual senior Martinites here last night going down with the ship. But the scene around him told a different story. Even in Liberal-rich Montreal, there were more journalists in the room than supporters of the erstwhile PM. There was little sense of coming out to pay tribute to the guy who 90% of Liberals elected to the leadership; just a sense of grim resignation. It was hard to blame them, considering how they'd been let down. Martin needn't have won, necessarily. But he could have at least done something other than stick with a 2004 strategy frozen in amber."

 

Both the unrepentant  Paul Martin and the unrepentant arrogance of the Liberals caused their own fall

More than half the people who voted Conservative in Monday's election did so mainly because they thought it was time for a change, according to an Environics poll conducted for the CBC the weekend before the vote.  Only 41 per cent of them said they were voting for Stephen Harper's party because they wanted a Conservative government, compared to 54 per cent who said they were casting their ballots for the sake of change.  The remaining five per cent didn't know why they were voting Conservative or did not answer the question. http://www.cbc.ca/story/canadavotes2006/national/2006/01/24/vote-poll060124.html