Misreading Canada

The New Republic wonders if we're about to witness the dawn of Bush-style conservatism in Canada. This seems to me to be founded on a mistake. The Conservative Party is not very popular -- latest polls have them in the low-thirties. The Liberals' problem is that they're also in the low thirties since scandals and so forth are boosting the NDP and Bloc Québécois margins. This is bad for the Liberal Party and does create the very real chance that we'll see a Conservative Prime Minister, but we're certainly not going to see a Conservative majority that could implement a bold rightwing agenda. A Conservative government would be awkwardly dependent on BQ support and probably collapse pretty quickly without doing a great deal.