Worth the Fee to Read It

I have taken a few days off to watch the latest tempest in a teacup bring itself to a boil. That, of course, would be the swirl of controversy surrounding Maxime Bérnier, our Foreign Affairs Minister.

Gentlemen and ladies, of course, do not gossip about the private lives of others. I have nothing to say about M. Bérnier’s choice of former girl-friend. That, of course, is what ought to have been the norm.

But there is little to no danger of finding gentlemen and ladies of principle on the Opposition benches, or in the trenches of the MSM, in Canada, in 2008. To quote the last election’s Liberal tagline, “Choose your Canada”. They have — and a rather sickly and unappetising place it is, indeed, filled with cynicism from the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition to the lowliest of hangers-on in the blogosphere (a certain group of people writing under the brand of “Canadian Cynic” comes immediately to mind).

Here’s the funny thing. At the moment, I’m not happy with the state of our nation’s Government. I’d be hard pressed to vote for its return at this juncture: I dislike the very notion of “the best out of a bad lot”. That, unfortunately, is what the Harper Government has become. It’s not enough reason to support it.

On the other hand, the behaviour of the Opposition since last fall has absolutely destroyed any chance at all that I would support the Liberals in the next election. This is not a matter of the leader of that party at all. All Liberals wear the badge of shame they themselves have earned by threatening elections and then abstaining on votes, up to and probably including today’s NDP non-confidence motion (the last Opposition-led one before the House rises for the summer session). Meanwhile the Nation’s business, which could have been discussing matters of substance, has been hijacked for a steady diet of innuendo, slime, reputation-destroying perilously close to either libel or slander most of the time: in other words, a complete and utter failure to attend to their purpose in being MPs. “A Government in Waiting”? That is what an Opposition is supposed to be.

These Liberal MPs — along with their cousins dans la dépravation in the Bloc — are anything but. I am utterly and completely ashamed that my own riding’s MP, the now dishonourable Joyce Murray, has done nothing since scratching out her by-election win in March, but add to the chorus of braying asses.

A strange day, indeed, when one looks to see Parliamentarians and finds them in the New Democrat benches, but there you are.

I do not excuse the Conservatives. Almost every Canadian with a Conservative MP has been as ill-served as those with a Liberal MP. Where are the matters of substance from the Government benches? Oh, yes … message controlled out of existence.

I look at the Harper Government’s record and am generally in favour of it. (I neither expect perfection — my views are just one amongst many and the Governing party is a big tent with many strains of political opinion — nor demand it. Show me a party closer to my views and I’ll give it a good hard look. Until then, I’m satisfied with the one that comes closest, most of the time.)

I look at the behaviour of the Government and consider them little better than Liberals, when it comes to being quality MPs. Committee chairs who undo meetings, repetition of the same point day after day instead of a quiet “that has already been asked and answered, Mr. Speaker” — for heaven’s sake, you can defend your position without descending to their vitriolic and bombastic level! — local voices stilled.

The Prime Minister’s Cabinet might well have been filled in 2006 with Ministers who lacked experience in Government — by 2008 they ought to be competent. Centralisation in the PMO has ensured they are not. Failing to build a viable bench of both party and policy leadership is a severe failing of this Prime Minister.

Yet the indignation continues, on both sides. It is strongly rumoured, for instance, that Stéphane Dion will make a carbon tax similar in intent to the Gordon Campbell carbon tax in BC a lynch-pin of his policy platform. (I shall save, for another day, my views on the whole carbon tax issue.) Nevertheless the attack guns are trained on this, with hyperbolic (and thus unbelievable claims) even before the policy statement is made.

This simply destroys Conservative credibility — what little was left, that is, after a do-nothing record laid down by Baird even on matters championed by this Government itself — even further. There are good reasons to question a carbon tax as a vehicle in a northern climate, especially one with a surfeit of geography to be traversed, and an urban planning model best described as “let’s sprawl, baby, ’cause energy will be cheap forever!”. When Garth Turner, for instance, realises that the problem with the housing bubble in his riding of Halton is as much driven by Halton’s need to drive everywhere — and thus house prices in Halton will collapse as energy costs rise, carbon tax or not — and that there is little to be done other than recognise the malinvestment and to salvage what can be salvaged from it, instead of crying out for “relief” on his blog, we’ll actually see some reality enter the situation.

But no, there are points to be made, and that takes precedence over sound policy, honest debate about contentious approaches, respect for the other party even in disagreement — all required elements to approach the truth of hard matters and gain a consensus that supports the course of action taken.

There was a time, not long ago, when the House would be raucous, and then members would cross over the lines to meet up and head off for a drink and dinner together. They were Parliamentarians first, and partisans second.

There was a time, not long ago, when policies were debated and a national consensus allowed to build. The citizens were respected first and not treated (are you listening, purveyors of Victory Funds and “oh, we’re under threat” letters such as Dr. Gerstein’s) as simply cash cows to be milked and X-markers once in a while.

The modern Conservative Party has given up on speaking to the electorate as adults. Paradoxically, it is the NDP and Green parties that hold onto a small vestige of that. (The Liberals, of course, adopted a permanent sneer toward the House and the citizens with Trudeau, never to lose it again.) Now we have — as I have oftimes said — two Liberal parties, for neo-cons are simply neo-liberals in disguise.

The indignation in the House and in the news is manufactured. The indignation of the electorate, on the other hand, will be real. It is as yet small. It threatens an earthquake if you keep going this way.

Whether that earthquake tears this Dominion apart, in a righteous anger at the very idea of Ottawa, or whether it simply leads to the sudden promotion, to Government, of one of the perennial also-rans, remains to be seen.

George Carlin, on his immortal Class Clown album from the 1970s, talks of the experience of being an adolescent boy having to go to Confession, and hoping to get the “right Father”: one would give you ages’-worth of pennance (”the four First Fridays, the five First Saturdays, a trip to Lourdes…”) and the other would understand (”that’s okay, man, tres Santa-Marias“). Five minutes later, the penitent would be back on the street ready for another week of fun and frolic.

Apparently the Conservative Party of Canada was hoping to draw Carlin’s “Father Rivera” yesterday with their “selective confession” to various members of the media.

Let me be clear about my own views on election spending. I like the current restrictions on contributions. They equalise the playing field somewhat — even minor parties ought to be able to find supporters who can kick in sufficient funds to play. At the same time, I’d lift the lid on spending. If you can out-raise all the other parties, you ought to be able to use the money. Finally, other people who wish to communicate on issues ought to be able to do so, with limits on how much spending they can do. (So this is hardly libertarian enough to suit, let’s say, a Gerry Nichols, but much more free than the current Canada Elections Act and related regulations allow for. In particular, if I want to spend money to support campaign messaging on how to spoil your ballot, I ought to be able to do so.)

So if the Conservative Party spent $19 million rather than $18 million in the 2006 election I am not particularly chuffed at the thought. In-and-out, after all, is a time-honoured practice used by all of the parties at one time or another. (I can’t stand the supercilious types who pretend they’re simon-pure on this, although, mind you, there’s no shortage of them. Needless to say, the Conservatives weren’t spending monies redirected to their party from Federal Sponsorship and Advertising contracts, either: their supporters contributed that money to be used to win an election fair and square.

Still, yesterday’s shenanigans — selective invitations, a semi-secret location, ducking into the fire stairs to escape questions — sent all the wrong images to the country. “If you act guilty, you must have something to feel guilty about.”

So, thanks to this ineptitude and stupidity (and I always recall that Robert A. Heinlein once said a number of different things that add up to stupidity is the only natural capital crime — even if you get to escape natural retribution for the first offence, not learning from your errors certainly qualifies for the aphorism’s intent!) the Conservative Party may well have given itself a serious, perhaps fatal wound, something none of the imagined bluff and bluster seen in Parliament from the Liberals has been able to do.

If this is evidence of Stephen Harper’s superior tactical political skills — Gerry Nichols, in a web-only column for the Globe & Mail this morning certainly seemed to hint that these exist — then yesterday represents the moral equivalent of slipping in public on a cow pattie at the Stampede ready to be trampled by a raging bull or three.

Everything now turns on just how turned off we have all become. Will Canadians become incensed and feel retribution is required, or have they heard so much dung being flung in the past few years that this gets chalked up as “just another gros enmerdement“? If it’s the second, the Harper Government gets its equivalent of Father Rivera’s Three Hail Marys and it’s back on the street ready to fight for the right to continue to govern, perhaps even with a majority. Or, if we get angry, does this mean we get to experience Stéphane Dion’s sterling leadership qualities?

For, in Canadians’ response, that is also part of the equation. Dumping the Liberals in 2006 wasn’t a matter of “paying any price” for a change: there were many who may not have liked what Harper’s positions were, but accepted that he had proven, in Opposition and in bringing his party together, that he was viable if given Government. Dumping the Conservatives in 2008 (or 2009) doesn’t come with quite so much surety.

It will be dreadfully noisy for the next few days. It might even cause the Opposition parties to suffer a collective spinal injection rather than spinal tap, and we’d be off to settle the matter in an election. Or this will be an on-going gut-rumble in Question Period until the summer recess, at which point quiet will resume.

I suspect the Canadian people are turned off, tuned out and hoping for quiet. We shall see what happens.

The odour of decay wafts gently on the spring breezes these days from the manure mound that Parliament has become. Yet another week of “will they or won’t they?” politics, as the Liberals hem and haw, posture and pose, stamp their feet and consider whether now is the optimal time for them. Buttressed by the latest Nanos poll (which everyone trusts because, after all, it is Nanos who got the last two elections right), we may see the government fall. Or not, as the case may be.

I have been thinking about what it would all mean to go to the polls now. Who, pray tell, is there to vote for?

Politics in a Parliamentary system depends on mutual respect. The players may and will disagree as to policy. They may even huff and puff in feigned indignation from time to time. (It was a horrible move, to put cameras and microphones into the Commons; it converted debate into theatre, and sacrificed the calm and the constructive to the farce of playing up. Good-bye reasoning; hello sound bite.) But Members should respect each other. They should see each other as the head-and-tails of the same coin.

This they no longer do. We are all impoverished for it.

Afraid of “eruptions”, Stephen Harper centralised and controlled his Conservative benches, and remained on an election footing even before accepting the Queen’s Mandate in 2006. Since then the difference between reality and electioneering has been lost (I shudder to think he might mean the words that his Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries utter in the house; that he might well believe the rhetoric as reality). With it, no new platform, no new directions have been taken on.

What the Harper legacy leaves me with is the conviction that a Conservative Government will squander this country just as the Liberals have done and would do again. How else does one see a failure to clean up the cesspool of programmes left from the “something-for-everyone” Chrétien-Martin years? How else does one see the sloshing of money at potential votes? How else does one see the loud rhetoric and the timid actions?

I cringe every time I see someone refer to the Harper Conservatives as Tories, for they are anything but.

But the Liberals do not comfort, either. Picturing Stéphane Dion in power is akin to picturing Joe Clark’s worst day in office as the best we will see. Behind the scenes, it will be as when the Don is dying, and the subordinates are carving out their own turf, preparing for the internecine war to come and grabbing as much as they can on the way. Is it cruel to compare the Liberal Party’s grandees to pseudo-Mafiosi? It is, and yet there is truth in it. For buying the Dion party means buying the Dion team: who on earth wants a rerun of Goodale, Coderre, and the like? Who wants to see a Cabinet riven by the Ignatieff-Rae manoeuvring? None of that lot should be allowed near the levers of power.

There is no reason to desire (nor expect) a Layton/NDP breakthrough or a May/Green arrival. Once again this election will come down to the main two parties. Perhaps, had either minor party leader actually been a Parliamentarian and a calm public debater we would see them differently, but shrill and loud is just more of the same. I can get crud from Harper and Dion; I don’t need more of it assaulting me from the others.

(The Bloc does not, of course, run outside Québec. The maggots run over the decayed corpse of that party. It has gone from raison d’être to raison de pension. As with the rest of the country, it has its voters who now vote for it reflexively, from habit, and without care.)

We used to have the ability to consciously vote “none of the above” in this country, and that is what the system needs: formal abstentions at the ballot box. Alas, party interests wiped out this option, and legislation made promoting it when it matters — during a campaign — illegal. Now our option is to simply not vote, or to go and spoil the ballot.

I do hope we are at least offered a decent and honourable candidate in my riding, someone I can vote for as an individual. Goodness knows, from her first day in the House, my new MP, Joyce Murray, demonstrated she’s not it, as she joined the cackle and disparage brigade in her maiden appearance. But on a party basis, a pox on all their houses; let them be anathema!

The long dying of the country’s politics will continue.

Two days ago, it was the turn of the Greens, NDP and Bloc; yesterday, the Liberals had their turn. Today, let’s complete the job, by looking at the Conservatives.

The situation for the Conservative Party may not seem as difficult, at first, as I have made the other parties’ situations out to be. They are the Government; they have a reasonable likelihood of continuing to be so. Even if we were to go into an election, they stand a reasonable chance at being returned to office (although not, perhaps, with a majority: Bloc fortunes at the moment seem solid enough to deny many marginal seats that might go Conservative in Québec, and Ontario, according to the polls (especially the Greater Toronto region) remains Liberal country. Without the extremely detailed polls taken by parties that allow seat-by-seat estimations, it is foolish to take any of the national polls — not even Nik Nanos’ work with its superior public track record through the last few tilts at the ballot box — as a seat count indicator. Still, the overall national numbers, and their regional breakdowns, don’t seem to support much of a shift in the seat count from the 2006 results.

Why Should the Conservatives Grow?

And why should growth for the Government have occurred, anyway? Canadians, mostly, don’t spend a lot of time on politics unless an election is on (and about half of us not even then!). For many of those who do vote, voting is a matter of habit: the elector has marked his or her ballot for the same party time after time. Growth in support, then, is more difficult than it looks.

But there are a few things Canadians don’t seem to put up with gladly. One is acting, in office, as though we are all stupid. The other is the sense of “no tomorrows”. Let me explain.

The Finance Minister’s recent blasts at Ontario and its government, for instance, are indicative of the strategy of making people feel stupid. It is, after all, only last fall that Ontarians trooped to their provincial polling places and re-elected the McGuinty Government, and quite solidly, too. There are good reasons to question the wisdom of that judgement — but the fact is that that was the judgement of the voters. (They may have made it for several reasons: John Tory’s failed campaign [plus lingering memories of the stench and decay left in the wake of the Harris and Eves Governments, not all of whose initiatives were good for the province and not all of whose legacy was on a firm footing]; Howard Hampton being at least one election past his best-before date with the electors; and a judgement, on the part of Ontario voters, that Conservative Government in Ottawa is likely to last and a desire to counter-balance it with an opposing Liberal Government in Queen’s Park [a traditional voting pattern in Ontario, supporting years of Liberals in Ottawa during the PC forty-two year dynasty — the Diefenbaker years and the Clark interregnum being less than 20% of the total — and the choice to vote Liberal and NDP when facing the Mulroney PCs in Ottawa, and the "Common Sense Revolution" PCs in Ontario when facing Chrétien's Liberals nationally].)

Whatever the reason, Ontario kept McGuinty in power: rabid, foam-at-the-mouth criticism on an on-going basis insults their intelligence. Is it any wonder there is still no headway being made in that province for the Conservative Party of Canada?

This sort of attack-dog approach has been a constant thread in the Harper régime, whether in public speeches or in the House. Not everything requires high dudgeon and indignation as its first, last and only recourse. Canadians expect a little more maturity from their Ministers and Government members — certainly more than they have been shown to date.

To his credit, in the House, the Prime Minister often comes across as more statesmanlike (certainly by comparison, and often genuinely so). One needn’t always like the message being given, but recognise at least that calm and even tones are a welcome reversal to debate form in an institution now reduced to petty tantrum, schoolyard bullying, the taunt of the day and other childish behaviour. So, too, the Prime Minister on those occasions where he speaks in public: less bluster by far than his opponents, more description and reasoning with the electorate.

Stephen Harper, of course, much like his opponent across the aisle, is well-known not to be a good “mass” people-person. He, too, is a character best served up in small settings, or on the radio: television is not his forte, and neither is the mass meeting, especially with an inability to control the outcome. This is standard introvert behaviour.

Harper has given in to the desire to protect himself from the fray, however, too much — and it is not a trait that is admired. There are reasons to have done so. As we have seen in the past two years, there are elements in the mass media who have prejudged the Harper Government and found it lacking for the mere crime of existing: from CBC reporters feeding questions to MPs to CTV’s general slant on the news, few days have gone by without a subtext of “ohmigod, what idiots Canadians were!”. The MSM, too, plays the contempt card in the face of the voter, more often than not. But, just as a Conservative in Toronto knows better than to expect The Toronto Star to suddenly turn generally supportive of his or her thoughts about things, the effect is often to neutralise the bias. This is why Conservative support has also remained stuck: not going up (because of the sense that the Government really is a one-man show brought about by the way Ministers are used as pit bull terriers and the obvious stand-off that exists between the Prime Minister and the normal interactions with the public and press that the role demands in the twenty-first century mobocratic “political consumer” economy) but not going down because of the obvious and blatant attempts to dismiss, smear, demean and deny the voter recognition for their choices, no matter how much it might disturb the salons of editors, columnists and newsreaders.

Until the Prime Minister opens up his Government, however, he will remain in this box. There were — and possibly are still (we are not privy to Conservative caucus meetings) — reasons to avoid public disruptions that cloud and confuse the on-going task of melding one party from the many strains that make up Conservatives in Canada. Mixing quasi-libertarians, social conservatives, traditional progressive conservatives and those who are tired of Central Canadian preoccupations and dominance of all issues into one coherent body that will stand up for each other rather than tear each other apart is a difficult task, and years of Liberal Government meant forming a Cabinet that needed (in many cases) guidance.

Still, two years on, some of the talent ought to be emerging, and not to attack, but to put forward policy and set the stage for future actions by the Government. This is important: Canadians do wonder if Harper would survive a leadership review by the party were another minority returned — and know he would face one if a coalition of opposing forces controlled the House even if the Conservatives returned with the largest number of seats (such a move would only take political calculation on the part of the Liberals and NDP, plus any Greens that might gain election). It is almost inevitable that continued minority governments will lead to at least informal but solid coalitions emerging. We’re not stupid, and expect it, and so we want to know what the Conservative team looks like, since a Conservative vote is not only for today’s government and leader, but for tomorrow’s potential one as well.

Until and unless Harper can “let go enough”, he and his Government remain stuck where they are, not quite able to command the result they have earned from the past two years’ governance, yet still able to block the emergence of their opponents — which means continued childishness and petulance, threat and submission, etc. Showing adult behaviour when facing little children would go a long way. Does the Prime Minister have it in him to trust the Canadian voter to make an adult decision?

If he does, and he changes his style and the style of his Government accordingly, he should find his long-sought majority.

It’s been a very interesting night, actually, watching the by-election returns come in. If nothing else, tonight’s returns show just how isolated Toronto has become from the rest of the country — and, with it, the ideas of the Toronto élites in the various parties.

Toronto Centre and Willowdale were never, of course, in doubt: a political earthquake of extreme proportions would have been required to shake these loose from not only the grip of the laurels of incumbency being passed on to two new candidates (both of whom had received great quantities of news coverage not that long ago as the Liberal leadership campaign carried on). Indeed, both have (as of the 20:39 PT reading from the Elections Canada website) achieved a 59% true majority from the electors — slightly less than one in four — who turned out today. This puts two more possible alternatives to Dion on the Liberal benches for all to see, each and every day in Question Period: I do wonder why my mind’s eye keeps seeing Gaius Julius surrounded by his friends. Probably clapping as the knife goes in, too.

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River, where Stéphane Dion’s hand-picked candidate, Joan Beatty, was expected to have a tough go of it tonight, but the battle was expected to be close for all of that. Nevertheless, this riding voted consistently, from poll to poll, to elect the Conservative, Rob Clarke. It would, in point of fact, have taken just about every NDP vote to have gone to the Liberal (I do recall more than one news article and blog post in the past few days who thought it would be a Liberal-NDP battle here!) to close the gap. (It may well be that that outcome does eventually come about — a Liberal & NDP merger, not unlike the Canadian Alliance & Progressive Conservative merger that gave us today’s Conservatives. Goodness knows there are enough former New Democrats already on the Liberal benches.)

“DMCR”, as one Maclean’s blogger put it, has another distinction: the highest turnout of the four by-elections. Still only 25%, but solidly so, not under the mark as in the Toronto ridings — or in Vancouver.

Which brings me to Vancouver Quadra, still a battleground at the time of writing (there are still 64 of the 237 polls to report, and although the Liberal Joyce Murray has been ahead often the lead has see-sawed). I am expecting (but not personally happy about) Murray to win it. However, Stephen Owen’s +20% legacy has been dissolved. The next go around in this riding should be more interesting, indeed. The Greens are coming out of Quadra with 15% as well — they and the NDP have traded the also-ran laurels all night long — and I suspect this represents the future general election in BC, at least along the coast: a four way battle.

The Aftermath

If there is a big loser tonight it is Jack Layton and the NDP. Across three of the four ridings (Toronto Centre, Desenthé-Missinippi-Churchill River and Vancouver Quadra) the party is in the 13-17% range, not enough to lead to more seats. True, all four of these ridings were Liberal pre-tonight, but if the NDP’s message — with its anti-war core and NDP opposition exercised in the Commons (no abstentions amongst the abstentious, so to speak) can’t make headway in a by-election, where both the prior incumbents and the current government could be sent a message, then they are unlikely to do so in a general campaign. The party has come to be seen as mostly “against”; it is going to need to be known as being “for” a coherent, integrated programme, or that merger with the Liberals is going to looking more and more appropriate as time goes on.

Our Opposition Leader, Stéphane Dion, also has failed to reinforce his position tonight, and may in fact have weakened it substantially. Four-for-four was — as with those who run websites and data centres — the price of admission. There will be those who link DMCR to Outremont and ask what other losses wait in the wings. The tussle amongst sitting MPs over whether to try and trigger an election or continue to avoid losing by winning a non-confidence measure will continue. No doubt the morrow will bring new analysis — perhaps first and foremost from the recently-installed President of the Central Region of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario) — but things are at a point with Dion where his supporters end up being countered not only by those who do not support the Liberal Party, but by those who do (and fear for it). In other words, the storm of sound and fury, signifying little to nothing, we have lived through for weeks will continue.

On the other hand, the Greens can see decent results in Toronto Centre (where they came second) and in Vancouver Quadra (where Dan Grice put on a solid showing). Both these results earn the party funding support for the next battle, having 13-15% of the total vote: this puts them on a part with the NDP. (The other two ridings showed a more standard breakdown of support.)

Finally, the Conservatives. Not only does Stephen Harper come out of tonight with a new MP on the Government benches, but it is clear that none of the attempts to plaster his party with goo — Schreiber, Cadman, etc. — have done any real damage. Neither have any of the decried “self-inflicted wounds”: income trusts, denial of the RESP tax change, etc. Whatever reservations may keep Harper from achieving a majority, he is also not losing ground. This is particularly important when we remember that by-elections give voters a safe place to “spank the government”. We come out of tonight with a government unspanked. Food for thought should the government fall in the near future.

The Anomaly That is Toronto

I close this piece by returning momentarily to the city of my birth, Toronto. There should now be little question but that Toronto has a political culture that is atypical. It was, as Ontarians well know, Toronto that has thrown up the “Progressive” end of Progressive Conservativism, both provincially and federally. Yes, there are other places that live and breathe a Liberal-NDP axis: Ottawa, West Island Montréal, the City of Vancouver. Toronto, however, exemplifies this. Couple that with the fact that many of the most influential Liberal bloggers are either transplants to Toronto, native Torontonians, or located just outside it in Southern Ontario, and that most of the English-language main stream media in the country is located there, and the disproportionate influence of the Toronto political calculus on national affairs starts to be seen.

But that influence wanes the closer the Liberal Party as elected comes to be the Toronto & District party. Tonight’s results move the Liberals a little closer to that: winning Vancouver Quadra, a seat where, from 1988 to 2006 inclusive, a box painted red with an “L” on it could have been elected with a 10%+ margin (and actual candidates did significantly better), by the less than 4% Joyce Murray is tracking to, suggests that urban Vancouver may be more susceptible to new types of races (against the Conservatives here; against the NDP elsewhere; every riding facing a growing Green challenge). The future, in other words, is changing: eventually, Toronto — even with its gerrymandered riding boundaries that split opposing party strengths to allow Liberals to sneak through (for Toronto is not monolithic) — will come to change, too.

For Toronto worships at the twin troughs of power and money, and eventually goes where these can be found. When they do, the Liberals as we know them are toast.

So here’s the real question from tonight: can the NDP (or the Greens) figure out how to compete successfully enough to tip the balance and make the residual Liberals the supplicants, when the time comes?

On this question the nation’s political future rests.

Update @ 21.41 PT: Vancouver Quadra takes the laurels for largest turnout and the gap between the Liberal Murray and the Conservative Meredith is closing. Nothing like a little “end of the night” (there are only 34 polls still to report) excitement, although I’m not expecting an upset here — just an extremely close result.