Yesterday I read that the (socialist) New Democrats were surging in the polls leading up to the big Canadian election. I guess Canadian pollsters have a lot in common with their American counterparts. While the NDP made some gains in yesterday’s election, it was the conservatives who won big. Prime Minister Stephen Harper now has a solid conservative majority.
Canada voted yesterday, and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at the head of minority governments after the elections of 2006 and 2008, has now seen his party win an absolute majority in the House of Commons. Here are links to the results from the Toronto Globe & Mail and here is the official Election Canada website.
What seems to have happened is that the Conservatives have picked up enough seats, particularly in Toronto and in the 905 area code belt around Toronto, to win an absolute majority. The Liberals, the governing party for most of Canada’s history, have been relegated to a third-place rump, holding onto Anglophone seats in Quebec, majorities in the tiny provinces of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island as well as the same number as Conservatives in Nova Scotia, plus some in central Toronto, the headquarters or Liberal-biased institutions like the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Party leader Michael Ignatieff, who returned from Oxford and Harvard to lead the Liberal party, lost his Etobicoke Lakeshore seat (inner suburbs of Toronto, with a large immigrant population). The New Democrats surged to second place, largely by replacing the Bloc Quebecois in the vast majority of Quebec seats; they will be the official opposition party. The BQ it appears will be down to three or four seats and will lose official status as a national party.
The Canadian dollar surged on the news!
Canada’s dollar strengthened and stocks and bonds may rally after Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper won a majority government for the first time, allowing him to pursue plans to erase the budget deficit and cut corporate taxes.
The loonie, as the currency is known for the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, appreciated versus 14 of its 16 major peers, strengthening most against the South African rand and Australian dollar. The Canadian dollar pared gains versus its U.S. counterpart, trading little changed at 95.04 cents as of 9 a.m. in London. It earlier reached 94.60 cents, near last week’s three-year high of 94.46. One Canadian dollar buys $1.0525.
“The Conservatives are always the favorite party for financial markets, so it should be a positive result for Canadian assets,” said Charles St-Arnaud, Canadian economist and foreign exchange strategist at Nomura Securities International in New York.
I remember when the exchange rate between the dollar and the loonie was just about the opposite, back when the US had a strong dollar. Perhaps electing a conservative President and congressional majority in 2012 will help turn things around.
Tags: Canada, conservatives, dollar, election, loonie, majority, Stephen Harper, win
All of a sudden, coverage of the election in both papers here just stopped. Wonder what happened.
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