Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party was just now elected Prime Minister of Canada with a majority government, 188 seats verus Harper 109 seats, versus Mulcair 30 seats-ish, versus Bloc Quebecois 10.
-said he would help middle class
-said he would help pensions plans people
-said he would legalize pot
-in favor of TPP (not so good)
-aims to somewhat redistribute the wealth in favor of the majority of citizens
-less militarism
-aboriginal affairs minister defeated
-pro-muslim immigration (not so good)
HARPER HAS HAD HIS POLITICAL BUTT KICKED OUT IN CANADA !
George Pye at least Harper is gone! smile emoticon
Tamohara Dasa Canada mandated him off our political map for now...
Tamohara Dasa yes, majority means hes kaput.
Replies
federal election 2015
The world welcomes Canada’s ‘super hot new leader’
Mark MacKinnon and Omar El Akkad
London and Portland, Ore. — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015 8:57AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015 2:20PM EDT
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It’s not often that a Canadian election grabs top-of-page headlines around the world. But it’s not often that a Canadian prime minister makes the kind of international waves that Stephen Harper did.
Making the election night plot even more interesting was the fact Mr. Harper’s main challenger was the son of the last (in many cases, only) Canadian prime minister many foreigners can remember the name of.
And so the fall of Stephen Harper and the rise of Justin Trudeau got more international attention than perhaps any Canadian election result before it. Britain’s The Guardian ran a Canadian election live blog throughout Monday night and early Tuesday morning. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera network held a panel discussion Tuesday looking at how the election result might alter some of the controversial foreign policies of the past nine years.
Full coverage of Federal Election 2015
And despite having generated relatively little attention among Americans over the last couple of months, Canada’s election was front-page news in many parts of the United States on Tuesday. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal led their print editions with news of the Liberals’ election win. C-SPAN, the public service political cable network, dedicated hours of airtime on Monday night to the election, most of it a direct live feed of the CBC’s coverage.
On social media, American interest in the election quickly focused on the man who will become Canada’s next prime minister. As the results rolled in, hundreds of Twitter users began posting images from Mr. Trudeau’s political past – from his charity boxing match with Canadian Senator Patrick Brazeau, to his various grooming choices over the years. (The Australian news website news.com.au had the most direct first paragraph: “The votes are in and Canada has come out of its election with a super hot new leader.”)
More substantially, there was immediate worry on pro-Israeli and pro-Ukrainian websites that their causes had lost an outspoken champion in Mr. Harper, who spent much of his government’s international capital on those two causes dearest to his heart.
Correspondingly, the election result garnered cheers from varied other corners – such as the environmental movement, and Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin – that agree on very little besides their shared dislike of Mr. Harper’s policies and style of politics.
Kremlin-controlled media could hardly contain their glee at the fall of Mr. Harper, who had fashioned himself into one of the most outspoken critics of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine over the past 18 months, famously telling the Russian leader at last year’s G-20 summit that “I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.”
“Another lout [opposed to] Putin goes: the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper lost the election to the Liberals and must resign,” pro-Kremlin journalist Dmitry Smirnov posted on his Twitter account hours after the result was announced. A headline on the state-owned Sputnik news service used exclamation marks to declare “Trudeau wins! Crack-smoking ex-mayor fails to save Canada’s Conservatives,” referencing Mr. Harper’s pre-election rally with disgraced former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
Meanwhile, sources as diverse as politico.eu and Scientific American hypothesized that Mr. Trudeau, once in office, might play a more constructive role than his predecessor during the final weeks of negotiations before a global climate change summit in Paris in December. Mr. Trudeau has promised a new climate change policy, after consultations with the provinces, within 90 days of the Paris meeting.
Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore posted on his Twitter feed that “I’m hopeful tonight’s election will put Canada back in a leadership position” on the climate change file.
At Canada House in London, staff at the High Commission found themselves hosting a standing room-only crowd of 165 people who gathered Tuesday morning – even as the final results were still being tabulated – to hear a snap analysis from historian Margaret MacMillan, among others.
Questions from the Canada House audience ranged from whether the incoming Liberal government would pay more attention to international institutions like the Commonwealth, to how fast Mr. Trudeau might be able to change Canada’s position on the climate change file.
“Canada’s more important than ever… [and] the ramifications of this result will be greater, in terms of the Paris climate change meeting, in terms of the approach of a G-7 country to military action in Syria, than ever before,” said Rob Marris, an MP for Britain’s opposition Labour Party who attended the Canada House breakfast, and said he was personally cheered to see an “anti-austerity party” win power in Canada.
The climate change Paris meeting will be just one in a rapid-fire series of big international gatherings that will give Mr. Trudeau an early chance to introduce himself and his government to the world.
First up will be a mid-November summit of the G-20 in Turkey, where the new Canadian prime minister will get a chance to introduce himself to Mr. Putin in his own fashion. Mr. Trudeau has also promised to end Canada’s participation in the combat mission against Islamic State, vowing to shift the government’s focus instead to the refugee crisis in the region.
The G-20 meeting will be followed by a summit of leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group, where many will be anxious to hear whether Mr. Trudeau intends to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement negotiated by the Harper government. Late November will also see a Commonwealth heads-of-government summit in Malta.
Follow us on Twitter: Mark MacKinnon @markmackinnon, Omar El Akkad @omarelakkad