To my non-Canadian readers

[medusadan]

Just a quickie... I hear pretty much all your media is triumphing the "rise to power" of Stephen Harper. I'd like to present a counterpoint.

Nothing has changed since my last entry - he is 30 seats short of government. To get anything through, he needs the support of one of:

• an English Canadian left-wing party with a federalist Quebec independent

Comments

[inanechild]

Hello again. It amazed me the response simply between US and other international media. The US papers were displaying headlines like "Canada rejects liberalism" and "A brand new right-wing direction for Canada," while a British paper said "Harper limps to victory" and the Chinese state paper said "Right-wing faces uphill battle in Canada."

[medusadan]

The Australian media put Harper's victory speech to air and that was the centre of their reporting. They compared it to the Labour Party loss in 1996, which was in fact a LANDSLIDE election result so a ridiculous comparison.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1554747.htm

[orderinchaos]

Thanks for your intelligent commentary Daniel. It's often hard over here to get a clear indication of how things are going as we're not there and we don't know the climate, so to speak.