{"id":4738,"date":"2011-05-03T02:30:10","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4738"},"modified":"2011-05-03T03:11:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T10:11:43","slug":"a-sad-day-for-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/03\/a-sad-day-for-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sad Day for Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">The news I\u2019m hearing from north of the border is not good.\u00a0 I had hoped that Canada would not succumb to conservative lies and Rove-like tactics.\u00a0 I wanted Layton to do at least well enough to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party.\u00a0 But it appears that is not to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; padding-top: 0px; border-width: 0px;\" title=\"3canada\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/3canada.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"3canada\" width=\"360\" height=\"320\" align=\"left\" \/>Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper won his coveted <strong>majority government<\/strong> in elections Monday that also marked a shattering defeat for the opposition Liberals, preliminary results showed.<\/p>\n<p>Harper, who took office in 2006, has won two elections but until now had never held a majority of Parliament\u2019s 308 seats, forcing him to rely on the opposition to pass legislation. While Harper\u2019s hold on the 308-member Parliament has been tenuous during his five-year tenure, he has managed to nudge an instinctively center-left country to the right. He has gradually lowered sales and corporate taxes, avoided climate change legislation, promoted Arctic sovereignty, upped military spending and extended Canada\u2019s military mission in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Elections Canada reported preliminary results on its website, giving the Conservatives 164 seats, which will give Harper four years of uninterrupted government\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/canadian_broadcasting_corp_predicts_at_least_a_conservative_minority_victory\/2011\/05\/02\/AFL9NfcF_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">How sad for Canada!\u00a0 I offer my Canadian friends my heartfelt condolences.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news I\u2019m hearing from north of the border is not good.\u00a0 I had hoped that Canada would not succumb to conservative lies and Rove-like tactics.\u00a0 I wanted Layton to do at least well enough to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party.\u00a0 But it appears that is not to be. Conservative Prime Minister <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/03\/a-sad-day-for-canada\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}