Stephen Harper wanted an election on Canadian values. Canadians gave him one. Nearly 70 per cent said his values were not theirs.

He was hoisted on his own petard.

He arranged for the longest election in 140 years to disadvantage the opposition. It only gave Justin Trudeau the time to showcase his steady improvement. Better still, it exposed Harper’s nasty character and endless dirty tactics — the more Canadians saw of both, the more they were repulsed. They turned the election into a referendum on him. The moment that happened, he was done. Signs emerged of the impending Conservative collapse.

Having led a one-man government for nine and a half years, he was suddenly and implausibly proclaiming that the election was not about him but rather his government’s policies.

Even while mocking Trudeau, he was imitating the Liberal leader — doffing the jacket and rolling up the sleeves at campaign rallies.

As his scaremongering on terrorism fell flat and his announcement of the Trans-Pacific trade deal sank like a stone, he doubled down on cultural warfare on Muslims. But bullying a vulnerable minority produced the backlash that put the skids under him.

He was soon speaking to near-empty halls, while crowds were swelling at Trudeau rallies. He was hosting gong shows and his minions were warning of “brothels in our communities” under a Trudeau government.

He was dashing into Conservative ridings to save them, even appearing with the Ford brothers.

This election was more intense than the one in 1988 fought over free trade. Not one issue but several, all pertaining in one way or another to Canadian values. A wide range of groups and people galvanized to get the vote out, leading to a turnout of 68.49 per cent, the highest since 1993 (when it was 70.9 per cent).

The early part of the campaign showed that Harper’s base of 30 per cent was going to stick with him, no matter the scandals and political setbacks. The latter part proved that he could not get beyond it. His right-wing Republican and Tea Party tactics that helped consolidate that base were the very reasons other Canadians would reject him. This polarization will unfortunately outlast him.

On the eve of the election, Margaret Atwood was speaking in Quebec City at the 81st annual congress of PEN International, the writers’ group devoted to free speech, to which I belong. When the moderator deftly steered her towards the election, she told the audience: “Look in the mirror and ask yourself, are you the person that Mr. Harper thinks you are?”

More than two-thirds of Canadians ended up saying No.

The election also showed that our multiple-party parliamentary system works. When voters decide to get the rascals out, they find ways to do it. In 1993, they reduced the Progressive Conservatives to two seats. This election featured much hand-wringing over the absence of a non-Harper coalition, formal or otherwise. Some even pined for the two-party American system. But that’s nothing to emulate, since it restricts choice and forces disaffected independents into expensive failed attempts at a third alternative.

Ideology doesn’t hobble most Canadians the way it does Americans. A liberal or a progressive conservative could vote for a Bill Davis, a Brian Mulroney or a Jean Chrétien. In 2011, I endorsed Jack Layton.

However, the constituency Harper cobbled together was something new — it had tribal loyalty. That being so, Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair had no choice but to beat up on each other to emerge as the anti-Harper. Their dust-up helped clarify the differences. Mulcair lost when he aped Harper with a pledge of a balanced budget and attacked Trudeau for promising to scrap the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. It was the NDP collapse that led to the Liberal majority.

Mulcair lost some votes in Quebec over his principled stance against Harper’s ban on the niqab, but that’s not what sunk him there. Trudeau took an even stronger stance on the issue, yet emerged the winner in Quebec as well.

In rejecting Harper’s style of ugly politics, voters turfed out its worst practitioners — in the Toronto area, Chris Alexander, Julian Fantino, Paul Calandra, Joe Daniel, Brad Butt, Bob Dechert and Costas Menegakis.

Harper fancied himself as a master strategist who could micro-target demographic and ethnic subsets and win. That worked until Canadians finally caught up to his tricks.

None of this is to say that Trudeau should not proceed with his promise of reforming the first-past-the-post electoral system.

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The election has yielded a crop of 200 new MPs. The new Commons will have 10 aboriginals, six LGBT and several naturalized Canadians, the kind of folks that Harper’s “old stock Canadians” may not approve of.

The election over, I’m resuming my retirement and book-writing. Thanks for reading. Shall return spasmodically, depending on news developments. siddiqui.canada@gmail.com

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