“We put everything on the line. We gave everything we have to give and we have no regrets whatsoever”, he said.
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“Friends, how could we?”
The Conservatives can also count on getting a rebate cheque from Elections Canada that will cover up to 50 percent of the party’s election expenses.
In his concession speech, Harper said the results were not what he had hoped for but said he accepts it without hesitation as the people are never wrong.
His wife Laureen, who was by his side throughout the campaign, looked grim, keeping her eyes down.
But a statement from party president John Walsh says Harper has asked him to reach out to his much smaller parliamentary caucus to request they choose an interim replacement.
It appears the leadership election organizing committee, as the party calls it, will operate in an independent silo to set the rules, dispute resolution mechanism and logistics for the race to replace Stephen Harper.
A policy convention had been scheduled for this May in Vancouver, and that will need to be postponed. But even though Harper has appointed most of the nine-member Supreme Court of Canada, the Conservative agenda has run into a brick wall, at times, in battles with the highest court in the land.
There were also mistakes during Harper’s time in office, Segal said, pointing to anti-labour legislation and the cancellation of the long-form census.
At the moment, we don’t know what – if any – limits the soon-to-be-installed Liberal government will impose on party spending outside the writ period, but it could very well be on the legislative to-do list.
“We have to do soul searching”, he said. The Conservatives took 99 seats, the NDP won 44, the Bloc Quebecios took 10 and the Green Party held onto one seat.
It’s just another unhappy campaign experience for Liepert, who was a provincial MLA and cabinet minister before leaving politics. His predecessor in the politically sensitive portfolio, Julian Fantino, was defeated.
Surely one or two Canadians who still have influence in the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper would have had the courage to speak up about this hateful strategy!
“I think we need a conservatism that is sunnier and more optimistic than we have sometimes conveyed”.
“Women beat men in Canadian politics right now, and if we don’t take proper stock of that, especially against a person like Justin Trudeau, we’re asking for trouble”, Boessenkool said. As a result, ordinary people developed campaigns such as ABC (Anybody but Conservatives) and expressed political anger though “Harper Phobia”.
But what the party wasn’t prepared for was a collapse of NDP support.
The grousing about what happened to the Conservatives and who should shoulder the blame has already begun.
Many worldwide media outlets have publicly criticized Harper for manipulative campaign tactics and race-baiting techniques.
“This doesn’t make me happy at all. It was the most inappropriate conversation I’ve ever had with somebody who’s running a campaign, and I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who run campaigns, for 35 years”.
“It was evident and very consistent and frankly it surprised the hell out of me”.
During his successful campaign for Canada’s top job, however, Trudeau offered a plan to ensure that future prime ministers don’t come to power exclusively because of vote splitting.
“That’s the largest thing that Stephen Harper has changed in Canada: just shrinking the size of government and doing so by reducing the tax base”, McGrane said.
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Harper’s departure will signal the beginning of a tumultuous time in the party – he has been the only leader of the organization formed in 2003 between the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties. Leger has been covering elections for decades, and said the candidates who lead with the idea of change frequently fare the best.
