Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper came within a stone’s throw of a majority government as Canadians re-elected a minority Conservative administration.
Harper’s Conservative Party was elected in 143 ridings, winning 19 more seats since the 2006 elections, according to final results announced yesterday.
The opposition Liberals were elected in 76 ridings, or constituencies, 27 fewer than in 2006. The separatist Bloc Quebecois, which runs candidates only in the French-speaking province of Quebec, won 50 ridings, losing one seat, and the socialist New Democratic Party won eight seats, increasing its total to 37.
Two independent candidates were also elected to the House of Commons.
The Green Party, which got 6.95 percent of the popular vote, once again failed to elect a single parliamentarian in Canada’s first-past-the-post system, in which a single winner is elected in each constituency.
Conservatives came just a few seats short of the 155 they needed to form a majority government in the 308-seat House of Commons.
“Canadians have voted to move our country forward, and they have done so with confidence,” Harper told a jubilant crowd of supporters at his campaign headquarters in Calgary in Alberta.
The Conservatives won 37.64 percent of the popular vote, the Liberals 26.23 percent, the New Democrats 18.19 percent and the Bloc Quebecois 9.98 percent.
The results come as a blow to Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who by most accounts ran a lackluster campaign.
“It breaks my heart to see so many colleagues who lost tonight,” Dion said, speaking to an unusually small crowd of Liberal supporters at his campaign headquarters in Montreal.
Despite the loss, Dion signaled that he intended to stay on as the leader of the opposition.
“It is clear that our economy, indeed the global economic crisis, is the most important issue facing our country at this time,” he said. “We’ll work with the government to make sure Canadians are protected.”
In the previous parliament, Conservatives held 127 seats, the Liberals 95, the Bloc Quebecois 48, the New Democrats 30 and independents four. Four seats were vacant.
The New Democrats improved their performance from the last election but failed to break their own record of 43 seats from the 1984 elections.
The Tory campaign in Quebec ran into major difficulties, and instead of gaining seats, the Conservatives lost a seat to the resurgent Bloc Quebecois.
The party, which had been written off by some observers as a spent force, proved again that it was there to stay.
“We have reached our objective,” Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe told cheering supporters in Montreal. “Without the Bloc, tonight Stephen Harper would have formed a majority government.”
Harper vowed to keep his campaign promises of low taxes, prudent spending, balanced budgets and stiffer sentences for young offenders. He also wants to unlock the economic potential of the Canadian Arctic.
“Canadians are worried right now, and I understand those worries, and I want to assure Canadians that we will weather this storm,” he said. “We will emerge stronger than before.”
The Conservatives had come within reach of a majority government early in the election campaign, but Harper, the first world leader to face an election since the outbreak of the financial crisis, was hurt by his perceived aloofness and slow response to the economic downturn.
By contrast, his main opponent, Dion, already handicapped by his mediocre command of English, had difficulty selling his complicated Green Shift carbon tax program to reduce greenhouse gases to a skeptical population already reeling from record-high fuel prices.
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