MONTREAL

A Liberal in Ontario, a New Democrat in Manitoba and a Red Tory in Alberta: this is not the provincial hand Prime Minister Stephen Harper expected to be dealt by voters this fall.

As recently as Labour Day, Harper had reasons to believe that the vast swath of political real estate that stretches from the Ottawa river to the Alberta-British Columbia border would emerge from a busy provincial election season sporting a uniform shade of blue.

His own Conservatives had scored clear wins in Ontario and Manitoba less than six months ago.

After two Liberal and three NDP majority mandates respectively, Premiers Dalton McGuinty and Greg Selinger seemed very much on the wrong side of their governing cycles.

In Alberta, where the usual dynamics of a competitive provincial scene play out within the conservative tent, precious little money was wagered on Alison Redford literally coming out of left field to become Tory leader and de facto premier.

It is probably of little solace to Harper that the next two votes could see conservative governments re-elected in Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan.

Some of the more brutal federal-provincial collisions of the past five years pit federal against provincial Conservatives in those two provinces.

That is not to say that the fall’s election results herald an era of open federal-provincial warfare or even one of federal isolation.

As often as not, the premiers bring conflicting interests to the negotiating table.

Redford and McGuinty’s mandates are more conditional than that of the Prime Minister while Jean Charest and Christy Clark — the premiers of the other two major provinces — face tough re-election challenges.

More importantly, for all the different partisan labels, pragmatism runs deeper than ideology among the current premiers.

Most of them are known quantities to Harper and vice-versa.

They have worked together in the past, including over the recent recession.

But on balance the provincial mix in the making should still go some way to reassure those who feared that Harper’s majority mandate would turn into a licence to do as he pleases in the face of a divided and leaderless opposition.

For a majority prime minister, the premiers are ultimately harder to ignore than the opposition parties and this provincial group is not poised to be a compliant lot.

The next years will feature a lot of heavy lifting on the federal-provincial front as the two levels of government renegotiate the funding of Canada’s social programs.

Those who are being selected this fall to sit across from Harper over that crucial period have in common a centrist perspective that is closer to that of the federal opposition than to the Prime Minister’s core conservative philosophy.

In contrast with prevailing federal ideology, they see government as a positive force.

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There will be little appetite in such provincial ranks for dismantling the country’s social safety net or for tinkering with medicare.

On that score, the progressive Quebec-Ontario axis — reinforced since Harper became prime minister by the McGuinty/Charest tandem — is intact.

Under Redford, Alberta might even join that axis.

Along with Harper, the federal New Democrats and Liberals should find sobering food for thought in the provincial outcomes.

The NDP should be wary of thinking that there is a validation of the notion that Canada is tilting to the left in the party’s Manitoba victory or in its Ontario gains.

There is so little that is left-wing about the Manitoba NPD brand of governance that Harper was comfortable appointing former premier Gary Doer as his envoy to Washington two years ago.

In Ontario, the NDP gains came at the expense of the Liberals.

That mostly reinforces the notion that, on the most central battlefield of federal politics, the two parties — as currently configured — will continue to fight each other to the benefit of the Conservatives.

In a battle of attrition with the federal NDP in Ontario, the Liberals are not poised to play dead.

Over his first year in office, Mayor Rob Ford managed to help turn Toronto into a no-man’s land for his provincial Tory friends.

But on Thursday the home base of the late Jack Layton essentially stuck with McGuinty’s Liberals rather than tilt to the NDP.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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