For Canada: It's Been A Good Day

Monday's election has brought wonderful news.

The Conservative win was foreseeable and desirable.

More importantly, the breakthrough in Quebec has given Harper all the legitimacy he needed to truly claim representation across the country at the same time depriving the Bloc of their most potent argument, namely that they alone can represent the interests of Quebecers (the Liberals having forfeited their own moral authority in that regard, at least for the near future).

With real, albeit modest, representation in Quebec, Harper can now begin to rebuild the bridges that the Bloc would dearly love to blow. The fiscal deficit, while talked about chiefly in Quebec, sorely affects every provincial and territorial minister of finance. The problem is huge, the solution complicated if at all achievable.

But Harper began to be heard in Quebec when he admitted the very existence of the problem, something the Liberals had stubbornly refused to do. Harper can now probably look to 2 years of relative peace and multi-party cooperation.

He needs to begin to tackle this big one: if in the course of those 2 years he can bring forward the elements of a solution, one that meets with the approval of a majority of the provinces, then he will have paved the way for his own majority mandate.

He will probably have managed to save Premier Charest's second term while at the same time throwing the perspective of yet another referendum into neverneverland.

Heady prospects indeed!