We have all had a week to reach conclusions about last week’s federal election. Here are mine.

It will prove a nation-changing event. It marks the eclipse of Quebec and the ascent of the West to a leadership role in Confederation. At long, long last, “have-not” Canada has lost control of Parliament to the productive provinces. Canada as we have known it is over, and a new one is beginning.

It took a day or three for the media to realise that the big story of May 2 was not smiling Jack Layton and the Nouveau Parti démocratique (previously the New Democratic Party). Yes, it was satisfying to see the NPd vaporize the Bloc Quebecois, and hamstring the Liberals in the process. But it does not mark the end of the Liberals or of separatism, for the Bloc was always largely irrelevant to the cause of sovereignty anyway. And it did not leave the NPd in any meaningful sense a government-in-waiting. Just how unready they are I suspect we will now see.

The kindest thing I can say is that by switching from the Bloc to the NPd, Quebec has moved from one irrelevant federal party to another.

In reality, Sourire Jack and the Noveaux have less clout with 102 seats as official opposition than they did with 36 seats holding a balance of power in a minority Parliament.

The real story of May 2 was Stephen Harper getting a majority – the first majority election in 11 years, and the first majority Parliament in Canadian peace-time history containing almost no representation from Quebec. You have to go back to the anomaly of the World War I conscription crisis to find an equivalent.

So not only is  Harper secure for four years, he does not have a Quebec caucus to satiate, and doesn’t likely want one. He faces an opposition even weaker than its numbers suggest. The NDP, Bloc, Liberals and Green will spend the next four years opposing each other.

Harper has done what conventional wisdom has always held to be impossible – formed a majority government sans Quebec. Even if all six of his Quebec seats had gone to opposition parties, it would still be 161 Conservative seats against 147 various others.

He will now cement this happy state of affairs by (first) de-subsidizing federal parties as he promised, which will weaken them still further compared to the Conservatives, and (second) by adding 30 seats to the House of Commons – five in Alberta, seven in B.C. and eighteen in Ontario, to bring them up to their fair share.

All the areas that will benefit most by this adjustment voted mainly Conservative last week.

(The same result could be had at less cost by reducing the number of seats in other provinces, but this is constitutionally impossible and politically problematic.)

It has taken Harper four elections in seven years to reach his goal of making the Conservatives the country’s natural governing party, but he has arrived.

Final point: do not expect Quebec to accept this. Sovereignty will resurge when the Parti Quebecois wins next year’s provincial election.

Your feedback is welcome!