Winning the election may have been the easy part for the Conservative party. Managing Parliament, given its slim minority, looks to be far more difficult.
With its 124 seats in a 308-seat House, the Conservatives need the support of 31 MPs to ensure elements of their election platform are endorsed. The options: win over the Liberal party and its 103 votes; persuade the 51 Bloc Quebecois MPs to co-operate; or attract a few votes from the 29 NDP MPs and the lone Independent, Andre Arthur from Quebec.
"The overhanging reality is that everything the Conservatives propose will be mediated by the other parties," said Nelson Wiseman, a political analyst at the University of Toronto. "We're not going to have another election for at least two or probably three years. The parties have resigned themselves to the fact that they are going to have to live together."
