Election, Lacrosse and More Hockey

Last Monday there was a Federal Election in Canada. The election resulted from a vote of no confidence by all the opposition parties in the current government, which at that time was a Conservative minority.

I would really have liked to have known Michael Ignatieff's thought process behind leading this move as polls showed that there would be minimal difference in the way people voted and there was very strong public opinion against an election. Whatever his thoughts, he achieved the one thing he was looking for - change. It just isn't the change he wanted. We now have a Conservative majority government, the New Democrats are the Official Opposition Party and both the Liberal party and the Bloc Québécois lost a significant number of seats. The Liberal party went from 77 seats to 34 seats and the Bloc went from 47 seats to 4. The leaders of both these parties lost their seats. As an independent observer (I can not vote in Canada) I would say that the general population and the inhabitants of the province of Quebec did not like these leaders or their policies or both and resoundingly told them so. Although to listen to friends originally from Ontario you would not think this was the case. They were speaking as if the people really wanted Ignatieff and it was just the Albertan Conservatives that stopped it. (What about the rest of the country who voted NDP as well as Conservative?) It is also interesting listening to my Albertan friends who are fed up with being accused of blindly voting Conservative.

Anyway for me as there has been a minority Conservative government running the country since we have lived here, I am very interested to see if I will notice any difference.

Now for another controversial subject - sport. Last time I posted I said that Calgary's lacrosse team had won their semi-final game. Last night we went to the division final where Calgary Roughnecks met Washington Stealth. Unfortunately, it was not the wanted result for the Roughnecks and they went down 10-8 in a game that was not one of their best. Let's hope that this was not the last tine we see the Roughnecks play. The team is currently up for sale as the owner cannot afford to continue to pump money into it.

Oh, and there's still hockey.