I’m temporarily bringing mikel.org out of retirement so that I may live blog with election results of the October 19th 2015 Canadian Federal Election.

I’ll be adding everything in this post and new material will be at the top.

OK so the live blogging never really happened…

I will share some notes and thoughts about the results now that things are pretty much decided in today’s federal election.

• First of all: wow. What a result! And I don’t mean whether I am happy about it or not – just the magnitude of the victory for the Liberals is very impressive. From coast to coast, in rural ridings, urban ridings, and suburban ridings, the Liberals made huge gains.
• I think this election has to go into the “polls are really unreliable” file. The polls have been radically incorrect for almost every election in Canada in the past 5 years, and this election is no exception.
• One of the talking points by the TV commentators so far has been that this has been the best-run and best-designed political campaigns in Canadian history. From my perspective this is a bang-on comment – and furthermore, that that’s what was required for the Liberals to get anywhere.
• Some individual riding results I find interesting…
  • Stéphane Dion seems to have won in his usual Ahuntsic-Cartierville riding. I have a soft spot for Mr. Dion for many reasons and it’s quite frankly a great testament to a humble public servant that he continues after having reached the highs and lows of Liberal Party leadership over the past decade.
  • It looks like Hélène Laverdière (NDP) will hold her riding in Laurier-Ville-Marie in central Montreal (my old riding for years) over Gilles Duceppe. I am a little sad for Duceppe that he was almost forced to return to the Bloc just to lose in *his* riding. I hope he will be able to retire once and for all.
  • Gutted for Andrew Cash in the Davenport riding in Western Toronto. I didn’t follow his political career TOO closely but he always seemed like a great representative and a hard-working MP. At least Charlie Angus seems to have won his riding in Northern Ontario. (If you don’t know their names, they’re both legendary Canadian musicians).
• While I understand it, I’m a little disappointed for the NDP tonight. They have really become an important force for good in Canadian politics during this recent period of ascendency. For instance, I believe they had more women candidates in this election than any other party in Canadian history – and this is important. I hope people don’t just write them off now.
• Personally, I was most impressed by far by Justin Trudeau during this campaign. I was very vocal among my politically-inclined friends that the Liberals seemed to me to be making huge errors, basically shutting up and trying not to say anything on the expectation that they would be once again tapped for form a government by natural Canadian law or something. In fact, though, during this campaign Justin Trudeau clearly annunciated a very human and humane vision for Canada, and was quite forceful about a return to traditional Canadian values that had been lost under a decade of Harper/Conservative leadership. As a referendum on Justin’s ability as a leader, he clearly passed with flying colours.