lifestyle

On October 14, North Americans gathered in an apartment in Paitilla and, although that wasn't the intention, proved that the use of "norteamericano" as synonymous with "gringo" or "US citizen" is at least as inaccurate as the way that people in the United States use "American" to describe themselves.

The conversation underlined the point. A bit of it was in Spanish, a lot of it was in English, but a lot of French was spoken.

This was a primarily Canadian crowd, munching on goodies from the Canadian-owned Cheese Cheese on Via Argentina (the word in French is "fromage," as anyone who perused junk food labels in Windsor, Ontario would know) and getting to meet Patricia Langan-Torell, the new Canadian ambassador here. The occasion was to take in the Canadian election returns.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, heading a minority government --- one led by a party that had a plurality but not a majority of seats in Parliament --- looked at the polls and decided to call a snap election, in the expectation that the main opposition Liberals were in deep trouble and he could come back with the majority that would give him more freedom to carry out his Conservative Party's agenda. But alas, the neighbors to the south had a financial crisis that seems to be the death knell for US conservatism in the upcoming elections; and Canada's conservatives got caught in an embarrassing little plagiarism scandal something akin to the one that once deep-sixed Joe Biden's presidential hopes. Yes, Canada's election campaigns are short and relatively civilized compared to the prolonged slugfests south of their border, but a few weeks is quite often an eternity rather than a "snap."

So what happened? In the "big picture," not much. Harper came back as the head of yet another minority government. Almost everyone gathered in Paitilla predicted that.

However, if the "first past the post" system of electing people favors two-party systems as much as a proportional representation scheme favors multi-party systems, one really has to look at Canadian politics as a series of regional and local two-party systems, that has four parties represented in Parliament. On this night there were all manner of interesting little pictures.

No, this reporter, who in his Michigan hippie wardheeler days attended the Windsor New Democratic Party (NDP) candidates' school and counts the late Barbara Frum among his all-time favorite journalists, didn't get the headline he always wanted to write: "Rhinosceros breaks out of its Montreal cage, rampages coast to coast." The neo-Rhinos --- ideological soul mates of the late British Screaming Lord Sutch's Monster Bash Wild Party --- again failed to come remotely close to winning a seat. Neither did the Greens, who were the only party to increase its total votes over the 2006 election and whose efforts probably cost the NDP several seats.

The Liberals did suffer a crushing defeat, and their leader had to resign. But that wasn't enough for the Conservatives.

The main problem from the Conservative point of view was that two-thirds of Quebec's 75 seats went to a party of people who really don't want to be Canadian, the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The Conservatives finished third there. Now a lot of Bloc voters are not deep down in their hearts secessionists, but protest voters or just folks who like the Bloc candidate in their riding better than the other choices. October 14 most probably didn't put Canada on the road to dissolution --- but you really ought to learn French if you want to live in Quebec.

Meanwhile, the people gathered in the home of the first person elected to the federal Parliament on the social democratic NDP ticket in Quebec saw somebody else do that to become the second, and saw several seats out in the Maritimes switch from Liberal to NDP rather than Conservative. The NDP also picked up seats in Ontario, but were unable to win anywhere in their old prairie base.

Out west the Conservatives did win seats from the Liberals, especially in British Columbia.

Net gain of 19 seats for the Conservatives, for a total of 143 out of Parliament's 308, still a minority. The Liberals went down from 103 to 76. The Bloc went down a seat to 50. The NDP picked up 8 seats, for a total of 37.

Before the results started coming in everyone made their predictions. I was way off, expecting the Conservatives to lose rather than gain seats. So what does this Panagringo know, now that he's been out of CBC television signal range for nearly 15 years?

Ambassador Langan-Torell was right on the dot with her prediction of 143 seats for the Conservatives, alone among those present. It figures that she'd know more about Canadian politics than anyone else in the room.

Now let's see if she can clinch the deal for a Panamanian-Canadian free trade agreement. That proposal might be the occasion for some rural residents to make their statements against Canadian mining companies, and might not please a few farmers who would fear subsidized food imports, but Canada raises the fears and suspicions of far fewer Panamanians than does the USA.

After all, when was the last time that Canadian forces invaded a Latin American country?