It looks like the Liberals will form a minority government in Canada, but I have a few notes that I would like to point out.
My math says that the Liberals can't reach the magic 155 number required for a bare majority if they join with the NDP, so the question becomes what price Bloc Quebecois will ask and what price Paul Martin is willing to pay. Does the Canadian government really want to be dominated by a minority party which is serious about Quebec's secession from Canada? Who knows, but it will be interesting to watch.
The other thing is the last minute surge by the Liberals. Watching the CBC last night, the commentators were making a great deal about a big, negative media campaign in the days leading up to the vote. It's not clear to me that this media campaign was entirely the making of the Conservative Party's political opponents. If the source of this media campaign was the same advertising agencies which are involved in the slush-fund scandal, the corruption issue could revive larger than ever, making the Liberal Party unable to govern and forcing new elections.
As an amateur American observer, I'd really like to hear comments from Maple Leaf.
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I'd like to commend you, Ren, not only for actually following the election, but also for being able to make informed comments on it.
Although the Liberal-NDP combination comes up just shy of a majority, it's close enough that they won't have to rely on Bloc support, at least not in the sense that they'll have to make concessions to the Bloc. Sure, the Conservatives and the Bloc could combine to bring down the government if they wanted (the one independent is a former Conservative who lost a nomination battle). But the only issue where they would really agree is on federal/provincial powers, and the leftist Bloc is more likely to side with the NDP and some Liberals on the major social and economic issues. As well, the Bloc will likely not be willing to ask a heavy price, at least not soon, since they will not want to be seen as having brought on another election which few people would want (the same goes for the NDP). So what this means is that Quebec independence will probably remain on the back burner, most likely until the next Quebec provincial election in 2-3 years. But you're right, there could be some interesting things to watch, especially some of the dealings in the House between all four parties.
As for the reasons behind the Liberals' surge, I don't know how much of it was the negative campaign, and how much was other factors. I'm working on some comments to post right now, but I'll respond to what Ren says here. As far as I know, the sponsorship scandal put most, if not all, of the advertising agencies involved out of business. So that aspect of corruption will probably not be revived. However, there are some other question marks, including the connections between some media outlets and the Liberals. An editor at one of the national papers (owned by a large media conglomerate which also owns one of the national TV networks) took a leave of absence to head the Liberals' media campaign. This has only gotten a couple of mentions up to this point, but it may become an issue, especially given the viciousness of some of the Liberals' negative ads. However, since the sponsorship scandal seems to have not hurt the Liberals too much (especially outside of Quebec), I doubt these smaller instances of possible wrongdoing will either.
Generally, it looks like the Liberals will be able to govern quite easily for a while at least. Since they did not have many big policy ideas either before or during the election campaign, there are unlikely to be too many really contentious issues, especially ones contentious enough to bring down the government.
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