Earthquake in the Great, White North

With all the talk about the bin Laden story yesterday, it would be understandable that Americans might have missed this story. If you felt the ground lurch to the right yesterday, it’s because Conservatives in Canada were handed a huge victory.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s Conservatives stormed to a decisive victory in Monday’s federal election, winning 54 percent of the seats in Parliament and securing a stable four-year term in power after vowing to focus on the economy.

The Conservatives grabbed 167 seats in Canada’s Parliament, well above the 155 they needed to transform their minority government into a majority, according to provisional results. They won about 40 percent of the vote, beating expectations.

The victory, a relief for Canadian financial markets, left support for the separatist Bloc Quebecois in tatters and the party’s leader without a seat. Bloc Quebecois advocates independence for the province of Quebec.

The Liberals, who have ruled Canada for more years than any other party, were reduced to a dismal third place showing with their worst ever seat haul.

The global financial crisis has apparently made Canadians very tired of liberal solutions. The financial markets echoed this new-found optimism.

The market’s nightmare scenario of an unstable minority government headed by the pro-labor New Democratic Party never came to pass. Harper now has free rein to keep corporate taxes low in the nation of more than 34 million people and bring in a string of tax breaks once he balances the budget, projected within four years.

"It’s going to reinforce quite a bit of stability and confidence, and Canada is going to continue to be very attractive for foreign investors," said Youssef Zohny, portfolio manager at Van Arbor Asset Management in Vancouver.

"With a Conservative majority, you’re essentially assured a fairly business-friendly platform, low taxes, continued investment in energy and potential future energy projects. In terms of investment it’s definitely got a bullish bias."

Pro-business is pro-worker, because pro-business is pro-jobs. The liberal "solutions" have only made the problems worse by taxing the job-creators or pushing them out to look for greener pastures. Canadians have had enough of this, and it’s very possible they will beat the US out of the recession.

If they do, will Americans learn that lesson?

Filed under: Conservative • Economics

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