Just for the next federal election stuff, all you guys are speculating on something no one can know about. Quebec won't vote for the Tories, that's certain -- but if they support another strong national party can't be said. The prairies won't support anyone but the Cons -- but how many minority members they send to Ottawa can't be guessed. BC is weird. The election will be won, like all Canadian elections, in Ontario. IF there's enough of a Con movement that they can grab enough seats to supplement the Prairies (or more), then they win and might become (or continue being) the dominant Canadian party. If the Grits or NDP can beat them back in SW Ontario, then they win as long as those seats are matched in the Atlantic, BC, or Quebec. As Canadian politics stand now, this is how the government is determined. The recent Ontario election doesn't have too much to say about that, honestly, except whether the voters that (decisively) rejected Hudak's austerity remember that when then Federal election rolls by; I wouldn't bet on it, provincial and federal politics are pretty divorced, but still, yesterday doesn't help Harper.
The larger question, the inability of the NDP and Liberals to work with each other, is another story. If they can work that out, without losing too much of their support to the Tories, then the Tories will be forced to the middle. The reason that they can get away with being so conservative right now is because of their base in the Prairies and the fractured opposition in Ontario. The election yesterday sure doesn't offer much hope of that.
