Bittersweet victory for Canada's Liberals

By Daniel Lak
BBC News, Ottawa

Mr Martin's Liberal Party will form a minority government

Confounding many opinion polls and political pundits, Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin has won enough support in a general election to form a minority government in the next parliament.

Up until the last minute, voter surveys showed a dead heat between Mr Martin and the leader of the right-of-centre opposition Conservative party, Stephen Harper.

Those same polls had previously given the edge to the Conservatives, who increased their share of parliamentary seats.

Canadians expected, and expect, more from us Prime Minister Paul Martin

Mr Martin acknowledged his party had taken a bruising at the polls, losing an estimated 42 seats.

"We as Liberals have lost votes, we have lost good members of Parliament... Canadians expected, and expect, more from us," he told supporters in Montreal.

"As a party and as a government, we must do better and we will."

Balance of power

The Conservative Party, formed late last year in a merger between two right-wing parties, made "historic gains" and would strive to hold the government accountable, Mr Harper told supporters.

The leftist New Democrat Party doubled its representation in parliament and looks set to hold the balance of power.

Its newly chosen leader, Jack Layton, won a seat in parliament for the first time.

The real success story was the result in the French-speaking province of Quebec, where the separatist Bloc Quebecois won most of the seats, taking them away from the governing Liberal Party.

Party leader Gilles Duceppe, a former member of an underground Maoist militant organisation in his early twenties, led the party to victory.

To wild cheers from supporters in the city of Montreal, Mr Duceppe pledged to put Quebec's interests first in the new parliament, and to work with any party that would.

Spending scandal

When Prime Minister Martin called the election in May, he had a comfortable majority in parliament.

The Liberals, under the wily political veteran Jean Chretien, have governed the country since 1993, winning three general elections.

But voter anger about a scandal involving misspent public money in Quebec, which broke after Mr Martin replaced Mr Chretien last year, seriously damaged the Liberal Party.

In the early stages of the campaign, Stephen Harper pulled ahead of the Prime Minister in public opinion polls. He told his supporters to get ready for government.

But a series of gaffes in the closing weeks seemed to cause some of that support to drain away.

Among other things, his party accused Mr Martin of being soft on child pornography, a stance decried even by right-wing newspapers that support Mr Harper.

Some members of his party had suggested that a Harper government would attack hard-won abortion rights for Canadian women, and impede legal steps to enable same-sex marriages.

Tolerant majority

This may have cost him support among mainstream Canadians, who tend to be socially liberal and tolerant of minority and women's rights.

Mr Harper picked up support in the largest Canadian province of Ontario, but lost parliamentary seats in British Columbia, which had been a stronghold of the right-wing forerunner to the party he leads.

Voters in Canada have chosen minority governments only eight times in the past, and few have lasted more than a year or two.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, a Liberal veteran, all but ruled out a formal coalition agreement with another party, and said his party was determined to make the new parliament effective and long-lasting.