Tomorrow morning, we might all wake up to find soldiers on our streets, gays and homeless people rounded up, and a new Ferrari in the driveways of every household with a six-figure income. But more likely, we’ll wake up tomorrow to find that the sky hasn’t fallen, and that it’ll be largely business as usual in Canada. The prediction of a Conservative minority was spot on, and in fact the Tories won more seats than electionprediction.org projected—and yet it’s a slight disappointment for them. The biggest news is the Conservative breakthrough in Quebec, shockingly taking support away from both the Liberals and the Bloc. But the hoped-for breakthroughs in Ontario and the Maritimes weren’t nearly as big as they could have been, and the big winner in British Columbia was not the Conservatives—though they retain the majority of seats—but the NDP, who quadruple the number of ridings they picked up.

With very few close races still in contention, it’s unlikely the numbers are going to change much: 124 CON, 103 LIB, 51 BQ, 29 NDP, 1 IND. So what does this mean?

• There is no easy majority. Unless the Tories and the Bloc join forces—especially unlikely now that both parties are in the fight for the Quebec vote—there’s no way the numbers add up to give any coalition a majority of 155 votes in Parliament. This is perhaps the only disappointing news for the NDP, who for the second time have to walk away without retaining the balance of power position. Under such circumstances, there’s going to be less party-line voting, which means contentious votes like the promised free vote on revoking the right of same-sex marriage (and yes, it’s phrased intentionally as a revocation of a civil right) will be even less predictable. And whether the Conservative budget will pass as-is or not is also in doubt; I don’t imagine anyone will block the reduction of the GST, but how the rest of the tax cuts fall out isn’t clear, not to mention new spending.
• The Liberals have been punished. That much is obvious, but the flipside is that the Canadian populace, by and large, weren’t all that disappointed in the Martin government’s actual performance. There were a lot of groups that had certain bones to pick, of course—the Liberals under Martin were never going to be able to bring the West in, for example, and a lot of people in the resource industries didn’t appreciate Martin’s leanings towards an arms-length relationship with the U.S. But it’s always hard to argue too much with a government able to deliver economic growth and balanced budgets. So now that the Liberals have been punished with opposition status, voters won’t necessarily be so quick the next time around to vote against them. This is especially true now that a lot of the big players of the Martin government, especially Martin himself, are on their way out of the party. Harper’s smart to recognize that the voters he gained tonight are not necessarily loyal ones.
• The NDP have made some amazing gains. This is easily the best news of the night, especially the NDP’s renewed success in the GTA—which was expected—and the BC interior—which wasn’t so much.
• There’s an urban/rural split, but with a Canadian twist. The Conservatives have swept Alberta, meaning both Edmonton and Calgary are Tory blue. There are certain issues that all large metropolises have to deal with, and Calgary in particular has thrown in its lot with the Conservative philosophy. Meanwhile we have Mayor David Miller urging GTA voters to consider the harm a Conservative government would do to Toronto. Conservative supporters would call this yet another sign that Toronto is out of touch with the rest of the country, but consider the political makeup of three major Canadian cities. Despite NDP gains downtown, the greater Toronto area is still a Liberal stronghold. Calgary is reliably Conservative, and Vancouver is an interesting mix of NDP and Liberal supporters. Toronto is a relatively mature city, but Calgary and Vancouver are still growing, and arguably their best days are ahead of them. Which city will fare better, and how much will each city’s political makeup affect the outcome?
• The West is in—and that’s a good thing. Anything that brings the country closer together is a good thing, and there shouldn’t be any reason why the west should feel the alienation that they have for at least the past decade, and many would argue much longer. I would like to think that the needs of Ontario aren’t so incompatible from the needs of Alberta, and the next government will be an experiment to see if the Conservatives will be able to heal some of that rift.
• I forgot how awesome CBC Vancouver is. The Vancouver anchors are running the late-night election show, and they’re so much cooler than the anchors out east.

Above all else, there’s a sense of resignation and caution. But now that a Harper government is a given, it’s easy to see the silver lining. Harper and his Conservatives will be on a tighter leash than the Bush government in the States; the runaway abuses of power that right-wing administration has gotten away with is hard to imagine here. Even the fact that we can give parties a limited minority mandate here—an option that also reflects the political situation in the States better than the “50% plus one takes all” system—is a sign of hope. The strength of the NDP and the Liberals, the fragility of the minority government and the nature of representative parliamentary politics are all firewalls against the Bush-led nightmare so many Canadians were afraid of when they first considered the possibility of a Conservative victory.

Harper, to his credit, has made all the right moves so far, right up to his victory speech earlier tonight. If he continues to make the right moves as leader of the ruling party, maintaining the party’s focus on fiscally conservative policies and parliament accountability and sidestepping the controversial socially conservative stances on same-sex marriage and abortion, then the Conservative label may once again be a label to wear proudly throughout the country, and not just in the West. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have to eat my hat when I said a Conservative merger would be bad for the country.

But we’ll be watching, Harper. We won’t lose our country to the radical right the way the Americans have.