Conservatives Crush Liberals in Canada Vote; Obama and Democrats, Take Note

Canadians handed that country's Conservative Party a big victory Monday in a national election that could be a forerunner of the U.S. 2012 campaign.

Reuters reported early Tuesday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives won 167 seats in Parliament -- a 54 percent margin that transforms their minority government into a stable four-year majority.

Though the far-left New Democratic Party also gained seats, it under-performed late opinion polls that predicted a near dead-heat with Conservatives. The NDP, which won 102 seats, had campaigned aggressively for more spending on nationalized health care and pensions.

Meantime, the Liberal Party, whose policies most closely mirror the U.S. Democratic Party, tanked. In its worst showing in history, the Liberals garnered just 34 seats in the 308-member Parliament.

"Our plan (is) to create jobs and growth without raising your taxes," Harper said to loud cheers in Calgary on Monday night. Under Harper's Conservative regime, Canada's currency has climbed to a par with the American dollar, and the country's real-estate and banking sectors avoided a U.S.-style meltdown.

And speaking of Canada's "socialized" health-care system, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that Canada's per-capita outlays for health care (public and private funds) total $4,079 versus $7,538 in the United States. The figures from 2008 (the latest year for which data were available) showed that America actually expended more tax dollars per person on "public" medical care than does Canada.