January 16th/2006:

The polls are in and with less than one week to go between the January 23rd, 2006 Federal Election we can safely assume who will win:

The Conservatives.

Scary, isn't it?

Thanks to province by province polling, with accurate estimates for each individual riding we can now predict the following: Of the 308 seats available the Conservatives will win about 120 seats and form a minority government. The NDP has made surprising gains and will win about 30 seats. The Bloc will win 50 seats in Quebec. The Liberals will win only 100 and the Green Party/Independents will win 3 seats or so. (These are only estimates based upon polls. Some of the ridings have very tight races and our numbers may be off a little.)

So yeah, unless something drastic happens during the next week, we're looking at the 1st Conservative government since Mulroney created the GST and joined the North American Free Trade Agreement.

There is a slight chance that the NDP might win, but it would require Liberal voters to suddenly switch their votes to NDP at the last minute.

Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative/Reform/Alliance Party (CRAP), will be the next prime minister and he's already writing his acceptance speech.

Frankly, Stephen Harper scares me. He reminds me of George W. Bush, but in an accountant kind of way. He is... cold and soulless.

I have no doubt that he will try to privatize Canadian healthcare. His party has been adamant on that issue and they keep bringing the topic up every chance they get.

It also means that the Conservatives will have to form an alliance with the Bloc in order to get a majority vote: Which means another Quebec referendum.

If the NDP won 50 seats and the Liberals 100 seats, plus 3 Green, the left-wing of Canada would be only 2 seats short of creating a left-wing government that will protect healthcare and prevent a referendum.

The sudden boost to the Conservatives & NDP has also created a huge political divide in Canada. With the death of the Liberal Party there is no longer a centrist party and the political forces have been divided smoothly into left and right.

Whats that mean for the future of Canadian politics? Well, it means we've moved towards a two-party system, similar to the Republicans and Democrats in the United States. Except in our case its the Conservatives and the New Democratic Party (NDP).

The problem with a multi-party system is the vote spliting in individual ridings.

Here's an classic example: Of the votes in an Ontario riding the Conservatives would get 35%, the NDP 30%, the Liberals 30% and there is 5% Other. The Conservatives don't have a majority of the votes, but they win anyway due to even split between the Liberals and NDP. If the Liberals and NDP joined forces and became simply "the Democratic Party" then they would have won that riding with 60% of the votes.

Years ago it used to be the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives (PC) that were vote splitting. That 35% you see now used to be 20% PC and 15% Reform. Now that the two parties have joined forces they are able to win more ridings.

I predict two things: Either the Liberals will eventually disappear and the NDP will become the popular leftwing party, or the Liberals & NDP will have to join forces and become "the Democratic Party".

And then there's the Green Party. Its a nice idea for the environment and healthcare, but frankly the NDP would do a better job of it. The Conservatives and the Liberals have bad records when it comes to environmental protections (Stephen Harper has promised to pull out of the Kyoto Accord).

So there you have it, the next Canadian government in a nutshell. Conservatives win a minority government, NDP and Liberals ridiculously close to forming another government and protecting public healthcare and what will probably be one of the lowest voter turnout rates ever (people are so pissed-off and jaded from politics that they don't even vote anymore).