Jay Currie

The Liberals took 75 seats. 29 of those were in Toronto. The Toronto caucus in the Liberal Party will be bigger than the Quebec caucus – well really the Montreal caucus – of 14 and the hapless 5 Danny Williams delegates.

Being the Toronto party has its advantages. National media attention and the deep sense of being at the center of the universe which effects those born beneath the CN Tower. The Toronto party didn’t understand the Green Shift anymore than the rest of the country did; but with a Liberal logo on them I suspect Torontonians would vote for the loonier ideas of Major Douglas.

The problem this election underscored for the Toronto Party is that not only was it resoundingly rejected in most of the rest of the country – running behind the greens in many BC ridings – but it was also trounced in Toronto’s more distant suburbs and in Southern rural Ontario.

Soon the Toronto Party will have a new leader and that leader will be…from Toronto. My bet is Bob Rae (despite the fact he is looking a bit Ted Kennedyish these days). This will, perhaps, roll up larger majorities in Toronto. Or not. Bob Rae was not the most popular Premier in Ontario’s history.

Soon the Toronto Party is going to have to decide if it will support the Rest of Canada Party in the Commons. The Toronto Party will have no choice but to support the Rest of Canada Party because it does not have the numbers or the potential for the numbers (27% of the vote) to be remotely competitive in another election and, most importantly, it is in debt to the tune of 15-20 million dollars.

The Toronto Party only got about 3 million votes. It’s fundraising “machine” has been broken for years. It will have to survive on the 6 million a year the federal government will give it. No one can legally give it large sums of money. Capital repayments and interest are going to eat a minimum of 2.5 million a year for the forseeable future.

The Rest of Canada Party did not win its majority; but it managed to reduce the Toronto Party to a couple of enclaves and suck its purse dry. Not bad. Not bad at all. The coup de grâce will have to await the next election. Until then the Toronto Party has no choice but to be Harper’s Parliamentary poodle. A job they trained for in the last Parliament.

(And, in passing, I expect we’ll hear that the Rest of Canada simply failed to understand the “Green Shift”. In fact, as the voting showed, the ROC understood it perfectly and didn’t like it.)