Canada Takes a Conservative Turn

After the 2004 election of George W. Bush, there were scores of stories in the papers detailing the hopes of the liberals here in the United States to leave this country behind and move to Canada, because in the eyes of the liberals, Canada was the right thinking kind of country.? They granted more rights to homosexuals, they disagreed with the US about Iraq, abortion on demand was widely available, they made great strides in socialized medicine, and they liberalized the use of marijuana.? It sounded like a liberal utopia, and Americans were supposedly fed up with the US and were going to flock to Canada in droves.

Well, as it turns out, all of the things that made Canada a liberal Utopia pissed off the general populace of Canada, and they overwhelmingly voted in a Conservative Prime Minister to Parlaiment.

From Reuters here:

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada took a tentative step to the right in Monday’s federal election, ousting the Liberals after 12 years in power and voting in a fragile minority Conservative government, television networks said.

Preliminary official figures at 12:20 p.m. (0520 GMT Tuesday) showed the Conservatives winning or ahead in 125 electoral districts compared to 102 for the Liberals of Prime Minister Paul Martin.

The result was a personal triumph for Conservative leader Stephen Harper, a 46-year-old economist who forced through the creation of the party in December 2003 by uniting two squabbling right-wing movements.

“I have just called Stephen Harper and I have offered him my congratulations. The people of Canada have chosen him to lead a minority government,” Martin told supporters in his Montreal electoral district in a concession speech.

“Canadians voted for hope over fear and accountability over corruption … Tonight is the beginning of a moment of reckoning for the Liberal Party,” senior Conservative Jason Kenney told reporters in the western city of Calgary.

Harper vowed to clean up government, cut the national sales tax, clamp down on crime, cut waiting times for health care and improve strained relations with the United States.

The Conservatives have no natural allies in Parliament and will therefore need to govern on an issue-by-issue basis with the backing of other parties.

“Minority means we have to be constructive, and we have to be working together and finding common ground,” deputy Conservative leader Peter MacKay told CTV.

It was the first time a right-wing party had won an election since 1988, when the then Progressive Conservative government beat the Liberals.

Martin, 67, had tried hard to convince Canadians that Harper was an extremist who would try to strip away personal freedoms such as gay marriage and abortion.

My question is-? If Canada is no longer a liberal utopia and Mecca of Multiculturalism, where will the angry US liberals try to flee to when they lose another election?? Venenzuela?? Cuba?