By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON May 3, 2011 — There was an election on Monday – the Conservatives won.
Alyssa Brierley said all she needed to win the federal election in Burlington was to get one more vote than the other guy. Turns out she needed 18,617 more votes to have beaten Mike Wallace who took the seat for the third time and will now represent Burlington for the next four years under a Conservative majority government.
Mike Wallace talks to the Cogeco Cable camera – getting his 15 minutes of fame early in the term
If Brierley sticks around for that four years and runs in Burlington again she will be dealing with a much different Canada – and it won’t be the Canada that NDP candidate David Laird campaigned so hard to be a part of. While the NDP got rid of the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec, leaving that political party with less than 10 seats and therefore without official party status, and did some damage in Toronto the Conservatives finally convinced Canadians they could be trusted and got their majority.
In Halton Lisa Raitt won again defeating Connie Laurin-Bowie by a substantial margin
The results for Burlington broke out this way:
Liberal candidate Alyssa Brierley did a decent job with her 36 day campaign. She vows to return.
Conservative Wallace 32,777 for 53.9% of the vote
Liberal Brierley 14,161 for 23.3% of the vote
NDP Laird 11,459 for 18.9% of the vote
Green Mayberry 2235 for 3.7% of the vote
The Communist candidate got 147 votes.
Voter turnout was 66.8% of the eligible voters in Burlington.
Wallace rode the Conservative wave that rolled over all of Ontario leaving a few seats for the NDP in the Toronto region. The Liberals faced an historic defeat and will now turn to finding a new leader and rebuilding their party and leaving the opposition task to the NDP who have to show the more than 60 new members of the House of Commons where the washrooms are. Both Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe were defeated.
NDP candidate David Laird now has six losses notched into his belt. Does he have another round in him?
David Laird now has six defeats under his belt. Brierley the one. Will Laird “do it again”? Brierley says she doesn’t give up easily.
For the political junkies they can now move on to the provincial election in October. The Liberals have their candidate in harness while the Progressive Conservatives have yet to hold their nomination. Rene Papin hasn’t let that stop him from running four color advertisements in the local newspaper and Brian Heagle was busy working the crowd at the Wallace win celebration.
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