OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Tuesday delighted in his Conservative Party's election victory, and vowed to govern with a steady hand after his Tories won their first majority since 1988.
In a landmark vote likely to reshape the Canadian political landscape, Harper won re-election Monday at the head of a long-coveted majority wiping out the party's previous back-to-back minority governments.
After routing his long-time Liberal rivals, Harper dismissed fears he might track the country, one of the world's leading economies, to the far right.
"Surprises are generally not well received by the public," Harper told a press conference, after the nation's fourth elections in seven years.
"So we intend to move forward with what Canadians understand about us, and I think with what they're more and more comfortable with."
According to preliminary results, the Conservatives won 167 of 308 seats up for grabs, while in a surprise outcome, the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), led by the popular Jack Layton, tripled its seats to 102.
In a ground-breaking election full of firsts, the NDP surged past the Liberals, which governed the country of 34 million people for most of the last century, and becomes Canada's official opposition.
In another historic first, Green Party leader Elizabeth May became the first Green to be elected to parliament, defeating a cabinet minister on western Vancouver Island.
The Liberals, which took a hammering under the flagging leadership of Harvard academic and human rights champion Michael Ignatieff, were reduced to a paltry 34 seats, forcing Ignatieff, who lost his seat, to step down.
Also capping a disastrous night for the separatist Bloc Quebecois, their leader Gilles Duceppe was ousted two decades after he was first elected to parliament and the party was reduced to just four seats, from 47.
"Canadians can now turn the page on the uncertainties and repeat elections of the past seven years and focus on building a great future for all of us," Harper said in his victory speech.
Analysts said Harper could now take his time eliminating a record deficit over his four-year term. His proposals for a new budget had been rejected by the other parties, forcing Monday's snap polls.
During the campaign, the Tories promised to bring in a far-reaching rewrite of crime laws bundled in an omnibus bill within its first 100 days, and nix a long-gun registry.
They also may eliminate a subsidy for political parties, open up the telecom sector to greater foreign investment and kill the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly over selling grain from Western Canada, according to past pledges.
"Over four years, Harper will have a great opportunity to remake the country in his image," commented Peter Graefe, a politics professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
"He'll have control of the Senate, and likely an opportunity to name four judges to the Supreme Court. At this level, he has the capacity to usher in major changes."
Duceppe meanwhile vowed the Quebec separatist movement would march on without him, but it was unclear how after Quebecers returned a majority of federalist MPs to Ottawa for the first time in two decades.
As the official opposition, the NDP "will oppose the government when it's off track and we'll support it when it helps Canada to make progress," Layton said, adding: "A new chapter begins!"
Layton, who is battling prostate cancer and walks with a cane because of a broken hip, had campaigned to raise the corporate tax rate, eliminate $2 billion in oil sands subsidies, implement a cap-and trade system to control pollution and increase spending on health and education.
In contrast, Harper has gradually cut corporate taxes, backed the powerful oil industry and shied away from implementing climate change legislation.
Layton, a mustachioed social democrat with a broad smile, had already overseen steady gains in NDP support in each of the last three elections 2004, 2006 and 2008 but vote-splitting with the Liberals had limited gains in seats.
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