The announced results, as we go to press, are that the Liberals won 173 seats in the federal parliament, and the Canadian Alliance won 67--each gaining 9. The Bloc Quebecois won 37 seats, 7 fewer than before; the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) secured 15, a loss of 6; and the Progressive Conservative Party won 11, a loss of 4.

Voter turnout was one of the lowest in Canada's history at 63 percent, down from an average of 75 percent in federal elections up until the end of the 1980s.

The elections make Chrétien the first prime minister since 1945 to win three consecutive majority governments. In his first press conference the day after the elections, Chrétien proclaimed it "an important day for federalists," referring to the Bloc Quebecois loss in Quebec, a comment echoed by Michael Harris, the Progressive Conservative premier in Ontario. While the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties campaigned across Canada, the Bloc, a pro-Quebec sovereignty party, sought support only in Quebec, which is an oppressed nation within the Canadian state.

Commentators noted the failure of the Canadian Alliance, a West-based right-wing party, to win more than two seats east of Manitoba province.

The NDP, historically backed by the unions, made a poorer showing than in the 1997 elections. Many union officials gave back-handed support to the Liberals in the name of preventing gains by the Alliance.

The vote registered three political features above all.

First, despite gains by the Liberals in the Maritime provinces and Quebec, the elections did not reverse the long-term trend toward the fragmentation and regionalization of bourgeois politics in Canada. This began about a decade ago with the breakup of the two-party monopoly of Liberals and Conservatives that prevailed for most of the 20th century.

Chrétien's Liberals won more than 80 percent of their seats in Ontario and Quebec alone. The Canadian Alliance dominates all provinces west of Ontario, while the Bloc Quebecois maintains its base in French-speaking Quebec. This means no capitalist party draws significant support across Canada.

Second, the campaign was marked by the continuing shift to the right in capitalist politics, with a sharpening political polarization and an increasingly coarse and strident tone among bourgeois politicians.

The Canadian Alliance led a decidedly rightist campaign--for the reintroduction of capital punishment, against a woman's right to abortion, for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, for increased power to the police and the courts, and for the privatization of the state-run health-care services.

Playing on Canadian nationalism, the Liberals counterposed themselves as the defenders of "Canadian values" as opposed to what they called the "U.S.-style values" of the Alliance, accusing their opponent of seeking to replace the national Medicare system with a "two-tier" health system and other attacks on social gains. In fact, the Liberal govenrment itself has drastically cut transfer payments to the provinces, which has resulted in a two-tier system in a number of provinces.

In Quebec the polarization was focused around the question of Quebec sovereignty, the heart of the Bloc Quebecois program. The Liberals made most of their gains among people who had voted for the federalist Conservative Party in the 1997 federal elections.

Third, despite its claims to the contrary, the record of the Liberal government indicates that it will use its reinforced majority in Parliament to implement many aspects of the Canadian Alliance program, deepening the assault against working people's social wage, democratic rights, and union organizations that it has led over the last decade with the help of all the other pro-capitalist parties.  
 
 
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