Although there was uncertainty as there always is, about the outcome of this federal election in Canada, news reportage and the polls taken at various times throughout the longer-than-usual election campaign did point in the direction of the Conservative government being ushered out by the electorate. This Prime Minister, who has governed the country ably and with distinction had a controversial relationship with the national press and they took every opportunity at their disposal with few exceptions to portray him in as murky a light as they could manage.

The civil service conveniently forgot that previous Liberal administrations, one as recent as the Chretien years in power, did the civil service no favours in ruthlessly cutting back personnel and services, following hard on the Mulroney years which began the process. You had to reach back to the Diefenbaker years to find a similar clamp-down on the civil service. These are fairly cushy jobs with their unions always in an adversarial position toward the employer. Outstanding workplace benefits and retirement packages that were the envy of the private sector awaited government employees, some of whom earned their keep, many of whom barely bothered taking advantage of all manner of perceived entitlements at the expense of the taxpayer. That segment of the voting population, whom tradition mandates be neutral politically worked hard to convince non-federal-employees that this was a government that needed to be turfed.

And it was. Yesterday, Canadians voted overwhelmingly to bring back a Liberal government. Conveniently losing memory of Liberal governments' penchant to wallow in corruption; even when, late in the campaign a whiff of just that surfaced portending the future, it did nothing to remind Canadians that the man who has governed us for a decade was the very exemplar of rigorous morality. Some of his unfortunate choices while in power worked to disfavour him; chief among them was the public mood to demonize a man many simply took an aversion to.

The tandem of a Liberal federal government alongside a Liberal provincial government which has been tainted with the scandal of wastefulness and corruption does not bode well for the near future of the Canadian economy and social cohesion. But the die is cast and we can no longer, with each enjoying a majority mandate, exercise a franchise alternately for the near future.

Last evening we had an exultant telephone call from our granddaughter, now in her second year of university studies in Toronto. She had finally accomplished what she had looked forward to for the past two years; made the most of the opportunity her attainment of the age of majority granted her; to cast her vote. Satisfaction at the very least, lies therein.