Andrew Perez

By all accounts, it was expected to be a status quo election, and one that would produce an almost identical result: a third consecutive minority Conservative government. The punditocracy and media establishment – confident Canadians would remain apathetic – had already begun to chime in on final seat counts before the opposition had even lined up to defeat the government in late March. But what transpired on the evening of May 2^nd, 2011 was the antithesis of a status-quo electoral outcome; rather it amounted to a structural realignment of the Canadian political order. On May 2^nd, Canadians turned their backs on more than a century of centrist elite accommodation, exemplified by the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties. Instead they opted for a Parliament where the populist right would face off against the populist left.

With his impressive electoral triumph in May, Stephen Harper has completed a remarkable reconstruction of the Canadian political landscape – and in doing so – has brought his political career full-circle. In the course of less than a decade, Mr. Harper transformed himself from leader of the once- bankrupt and demoralized Canadian Alliance party to a third-term Prime Minister, buttressed by a sizeable majority government. The once-powerful Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties that built this country are now either eliminated or marginalized. Breaking a seven-year monopoly on minority rule, the electorate delivered Mr. Harper – the most Conservative prime minister in Canada’s recent history – a strong, stable, majority government. But in the same breath, progressive voters overwhelmingly rejected the once-dominant Bloc Québécois and Liberal parties, instead lending their support to the NDP, the country’s most left-leaning party. The net result: less common ground between the Conservative government and NDP opposition than there has been between any previous federal government and its official opposition.

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