Last month, Stephen Harper's Conservatives became the first ever Canadian Government to be found in contempt of Parliament, causing early elections. Today, it looks like that government has been re-elected. As I watch, it looks like they're on track for 165 seats, a comfortable majority in Canadian terms. Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party, Canada's equivalent of the Alliance, looks to have won over a hundred seats, supplanting the Liberals (Canada's "natural party of government") as Opposition. Many of their gains have come at the expense of the Liberals, but their primary victim has been the separatist Bloc Québécois, who have been reduced from 49 seats to a mere handful.
Canada uses an unfair electoral system, so the result is massively disproportionate. I'll do a full table when final results are in, but the Greens and Liberals and Bloc have been robbed of representation, in order to provide an artificial majority for a party which has won a mere 40% of the vote. Canada clearly needs a fair electoral system. Sadly, neither of its two traditional major parties seem keen on one.
