u-g-l-y you ain't got no alibi

Harper wins minority, PM steps down

Harper-led Conservatives promise ethics overhaul, crime crackdown and tax cuts

Tuesday, January 24, 2006. 12:56 AM

SUSAN DELACOURT
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

The Conservatives have toppled Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government, winning a shaky minority.

Martin conceded defeat early today and announced he would step down as Liberal party leader after an orderly transition.

“I will not take our party into another election as leader,” Martin said at his LaSalle-Emard headquarters in Montreal.

The crowd of supporters cried, “No,” but the results of yesterday's election spell the end of a decades-long political journey for Martin and his team.

By winning a couple of dozen seats more than Martin’s party, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and his party have ended 12 years of Liberal rule and drawn the West and Quebec into a radically altered federal political landscape.

Still, Harper finds himself with a Conservative minority that is surrounded by three, strong progressive-leaning parties — the New Democrats have surged in strength and the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals retained some important strength in Quebec and urban areas.

This precarious situation raises real questions about which of the Conservative policy priorities Harper could realistically get through the Commons. His planned cuts to the GST could likely survive, for instance, but the combined strength of the opposition could thwart any of his harder-right conservative ideas.

That leads to the bigger question too of how long this government could last and when another election could be unleashed on the country. Tories see this as a first foothold. Diane Ablonczy, a long-time Conservative elected in Calgary and expected to be in cabinet, said last night:

“By definition, a minority government is a shorter term ... but I think it is a start. Canadians ... want to test drive the Conservative party and we’re quite happy. We’re sure they’re going to like the product.”

Harper will be leading a highly inexperienced, rookie government, facing an expert opposition, literally loaded with Liberal ministers who know how the system works.

With only a few exceptions — government House leader Tony Valeri, Seniors Minister Tony Ianno and Agriculture Minister Andy Mitchell, for instance — virtually all of Martin’s cabinet held on to their seats.

Immigration Minister Joe Volpe, who was also the chief minister for Ontario and Toronto, kept his Eglinton-Lawrence seat. So did Human Resources Minister Belinda Stronach, Public Health Minister Carolyn Bennett, Defence Minister Bill Graham and Communities and Infrastructure Minister John Godfrey.

It was not the total rout of the Liberals that Tories were daring to dream about in the final days of the campaign — proof that some of the Martin scare tactics against Harper, and his “radical social agenda,” may have found their mark.

At Tory headquarters in Calgary last night, one adviser confided: “We certainly would have wanted more (seats).”

But the Liberal loss also showed that the Tories’ own attacks, specifically on government corruption, had finally chipped away the party’s hold on power.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said he had felt this more acutely than others. It was Goodale who figured largely in what became a mid-campaign bombshell — the announcement on Dec. 28 that the RCMP were investigating alleged leaks from his office to the financial markets about income trust tax changes.

Most pundits and strategists said this was the beginning of the end for the Liberals, that there was no recovery possible afterward.

“This has been a difficult and challenging day at the end of a long and challenging campaign; probably the toughest campaign I have ever experienced,” Goodale said last night after winning his own Saskatchewan riding.

It’s been more than 12 years since Canada had a Conservative government. Brian Mulroney, the last man to lead the Conservative party to power, praised Harper for leading the Tories to a minority government.

“It’s a tremendous tribute to Stephen Harper for what he was able to do in bringing about tonight’s victory,” Mulroney told CTV from West Palm Beach, Fla., last night.

“Reaching out to Peter MacKay to unify the party, then to move the party to the centre, then to devise a campaign strategy and finally to execute it flawlessly, these are marks of leadership.

“And Stephen Harper demonstrated that leadership in a great degree.”

The former prime minister was particularly thrilled with the Tories’ performance in Quebec,where early results gave the Conservatives 10 seats.

The final tally wasn’t even in when the first angry call came for Martin’s resignation.

“We’re heading toward a (Conservative) minority and he’s got to pack it in,” said MP Roger Gallaway, who was defeated in his Sarnia riding.

“I would think the sooner the better because this Parliament isn’t going to last.”

This wasn’t a unanimous sentiment expressed last night.

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal winner in Etobicoke-Lakeshore and one of the people seen as likely to run as Martin’s successor, said: “The Prime Minister fought very hard. He earned the respect of everybody who fought in the trenches. There’s no leadership question.”

Stronach, for her part, said she believed the party would give Martin time to re-energize and revitalize the party.

Gallaway said he was prepared to let Martin linger up to six months at the helm in order to give the party time to organize an orderly succession.

But he said the tightly knit clique of confidants who ran the Prime Minister’s Office and the disastrous Liberal campaign will have to go immediately.

“This thing has been botched from Day 1,” Gallaway said of the campaign. “If there’s going to be any peace and harmony, they’ve got to go.”

But at least one potential contender for the race to succeed Martin was more circumspect, warning that the party faces a massive rebuilding effort and can’t afford any more bloodletting.

“We do not have the luxury to not include everybody,” said Toronto MP Maurizio Bevilacqua.

“Tonight’s results should not become an opportunity for people to fingerpoint but rather an opportunity to focus on the future.”

Bevilacqua, who at 45 is one of the youngest putative successors, said the party needs to “reach out to a new generation of Liberals across the country” and put the infighting of the past behind them.

The Atlantic region did not produce the big gains that both the Conservatives and New Democrats had hoped to make. Liberals managed to retain their hold on the area, losing less than a handful of seats and retaining prominent figures such as Public Works Minister Scott Brison and Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott.

The Liberals’ old caucus chairman, Andy Savoy, was among the casualties — his New Brunswick seat of Tobique-Mactaquac falling to the Conservatives.

With a file from Canadian Press