{"id":1087,"date":"2008-09-07T17:38:19","date_gmt":"2008-09-07T16:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2008-09-07T17:38:19","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T16:38:19","slug":"now-canada-has-an-election-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"Now Canada has an election too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As if the election campaign in the United States was not enough excitement for North Americans, we now have <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/americas\/7602864.stm\">the news<\/a> &#8211; expected for several weeks &#8211; that we are going to be into an election campaign in Canada as well.   It&#8217;s &#8220;official&#8221; as of today and the date is 14 October.<br \/>\nPrime Minister Stephen Harper&#8217;s Conservative Party has been in a minority government situation for the past two years   He&#8217;s had to rely on support from one of the other parties to get legislation through or else rely on the Liberal Party refusing to vote.<br \/>\nCurrent standings (total 308) are:<br \/>\nConservative Party 127<br \/>\nLiberal Party 95<br \/>\nBloc Quebecois 48<br \/>\nNew Democratic Party 30<br \/>\nGreen Party 1<br \/>\nIndependent 3<br \/>\nVacant 4<br \/>\nCanadians still use the British first past the post electoral system.<br \/>\nMy man in Canada advises me as follows:<br \/>\n&#8220;What I expect will happen (not by any means what I want to happen!) is that the Conservative Party will win a slim majority at the expense of the Liberals and the Bloc Quebcois.   Quebec nationalism is on the decline right now. The NDP (the main party of the left) will likely gain 2-3 seats.<br \/>\nThe single Green seat is the result of a Liberal being tossed from the party after an election expense scandal and then &#8220;defecting&#8221; to the Greens.  &#8220;Party-switchers&#8221; generally don&#8217;t get re-elected in the general election.  At best, the Green Party leader has a shot at getting elected to her seat in Nova Scotia&#8230;where she&#8217;s running against the Foreign Affairs Minister.&#8221;<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s see if this assessment proves correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As if the election campaign in the United States was not enough excitement for North Americans, we now have the news &#8211; expected for several weeks &#8211; that we are going to be into an election campaign in Canada as well. It&#8217;s &#8220;official&#8221; as of today and the date is 14 October. Prime Minister Stephen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}