Last night, Canadians voted for a change in government, but by a narrow margin. Vote counts are incomplete at the time of printing, but the largest share of the vote went to Cameron Duff, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. The lead of victory was razor thin, 33% to 31%, but still enough for now Prime Minister-Elect Duff to unerringly claim victory.
Duff, in his victory speech last night, thanked “Bruce Meach, Patrick Wakefield, Georges Valence, and Abethey Mazli for a vigorous, professional, and hard-fought campaign”, and extended the thanks to the Canadian people. Meach claimed something of a victory in his concession speech, made at one o’clock this morning, just before this issue went to print: “I stand before you, chastened, but I promise to present a vigorous opposition to the incoming government, led by the Cameron Duff. I would like to thank all of our supporters in this hard-fought campaign,” The full contents of the speech are in our special Election section.
“No doubt, the defeat of Meach by Duff would be most devastating to him,” said Mark Gainly, of the polling and research agency Treiserd-Wiss. “He viewed the
election as a given, and up until nearly Christmas, he had believed himself invincible.”
Catherine Ness, a former cabinet Minister close to the Prime Minister, corroborated this: “Oh, I imagine he must be very disappointed,” she said. “He was very ambitious and possessive. He wanted to continue shaping Canada’s destiny for quite some time.”
Xavier Nolen, another former cabinet Minister, said, “Quite frankly, this election has been a repudiation of Meach and his way of running government. I will admit that we have grown rather complacent, and we I think we need to spend some time in the woods,”
Meach said he wouldn’t be resigning in his concession speech vowing to “fight the good fight,” but there are already calls for his resignation. Angus Ross, former Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, as well as of Natural Resources, said in a late-night interview, “the overriding theme of this election was of Bruce [Meach’s] lack of leadership skills and poor direction,”
Meach, upon receiving knowledge of this statement by a former Minister, said emotionally, “I vow to continue as the leader of the Liberal Party, and these desires expressed by certain unsavoury individuals are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,”
The election did not produce murmurs about the leadership skills of either Patrick Wakefield, of Winnipeg South, or of Georges Valence, of Shawinigan.
That would all be about expectations, thought Margaret. Nobody seriously expected either the Bloquistes or the socialists to form the government, thus there are no cloak-and-dagger moves within those parties. Meach got what he deserved; he and all those around him became complacent and corrupt, and now they need to spend some years in the political wilderness. It’s not complete exile, she thought; opposition parties are very powerful in minority governments, after all. All of this was the major reason for her, and Hyram, having cast their ballots for Fiona O’Brien. She and Hyram had both known her from her days working as the owner of the small restaurant chain O’Brien’s; Hyram had once been a major wholesale supplier, and the two got along quite well. A person like O’Brien should expect to do well, given luck, and it seemed like she had all the luck. It was also true that hardworking people like Fiona make their own luck, and this was certainly the case in the last election campaign, where she left nothing to chance. It was quite unfortunate, however that she had lost by a mere twelve votes to the Liberal incumbent, Peter Ronald Poores, the current President of the Treasury Board, whom Margaret viewed as a sycophant, particularly when seeking votes; she thought Poores’s kingly, regal stature and attitude had something to do with his re-election. There was still a ray of hope, however: the margin of victory for Poors was so narrow as to automatically trigger a recount.
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