Thank you Quebec: The federal election rant (part 3)

I could go on and on about what a depressing night it's been watching the election results trickle in and facing up to the fact that we're in for more of the same from Stephen Harper and his reactionary Conservatives.

But I'm not going to.

I could expand on what I've already said in my two early pieces on this election - "What Canadians Want" and "What Canadians Need" - about how our electoral system is so clearly broken here in Canada and that, once again, a small minority of the vote, 37.6 percent this time, was almost enough to win a majority in parliament.

I could talk about how the four progressive parties in this country won over 62% of the vote, but none of the power.

And I could certainly go on and on about how the Greens got 6.8% of the vote, but absolutely no seats, while the Bloc got 9.9% and 50 seats.

Without much effort, I could write another long rant on the need for some true democracy (i.e. proportional representation) in this country.

And I could vehemently express my revulsion for the Conservatives winning 44 percent of the vote here in so-called 'progressive British Columbia'.

And, believe me, I could easily express my disgust at the fact that 37 percent of people in this nation of ours found it in themselves to vote for a party, the Conservatives, with no plan whatsoever to deal with the environmental disaster facing all of us in the coming years. A party not only lacking a plan of their own but one that, incredibly, spent the entire campaign ridiculing and mocking their main rival for actually having one.

Oh, there's so much I could rant and rave about tonight...but I'm not going to.

No, instead I'm going to focus on the positive and give thanks where thanks is due.

It is true that Harper has an increased minority, but it's still a minority and not a majority. And the fact is we have Quebec and Quebec alone to thank for saving us from a much worse fate.

How ironic is it that it's the sovereigntists of Quebec, or at the very least Québécois voting for the sovereigntist party, who end up saving Canada from itself? If it wasn't for the big showing by the Bloc in Quebec today we would be facing the most retrograde, right-wing, harmful majority government in a generation, if not longer.

So, thank you Quebec. And in return, we forgive you for winning far more Stanley Cups than were rightfully yours. We forgive you for sometimes making the rest of us Canadians seem a bit uncultured and unsophisticated. We forgive you for giving us Brian Mulroney. And, most of all, hard as it may be to actually do, we forgive you for Celine Dion.

Thank you Quebec! Thank you!

Mike Cowie is a writer currently embarked on a book about his three-year trip across Asia with his wife, Sonoko. Read more of Mike’s views on his Web site.