Caveat: as a law-abiding lawyer but non-Canadian citizen (thank you, Andrews vs. LSBC!), I obviously didn't vote Monday.

Ending "automatic" pardons may be reasonable, but given Harper I'm skeptical that the legislation will, actually, be that reasonable in its final form.

The Economist before the election briefly suggested that Harper was the least bad alternative, and I think that view was persuasive to many Canadians. The few voters I spoke to about the election beforehand, if they intended to vote Conservative, were doing so DESPITE Harper and based on the Conservative platform as a whole. They weren't voting for the Liberals either/both because they couldn't stand Ignatieff (a sentiment with which I agree - he may very well be a nice person with good ideas, but you wouldn't know it from his virtual invisibility the last few years, not a good quality in a politician/leader) and/or the Liberal platform had not been clearly communicated to them (the Liberal position seemed to be anti-Harper, not pro-anything). Those who were voting for the Liberals were doing so out of anti-Harper bias ("bias" doesn't mean you're wrong...) and saw Ignatieff as slightly less bad.

That is, I think those I spoke with and many others who voted for Harper in the GTA especially were the type who would have voted for an economically responsible Liberal party with a more charismatic leader than Ignatieff (e.g. Martin-type, leaving aside sponsorship issues which were Chretien's fault/responsibility). I even know a few who were leaning Conservative but with respect to Liberals would have preferred Rae to Ignatieff.

Now, as a lawyer, I find Harper's statements and behaviour (proroguing for crass political reasons, wrongly arguing that coalition governments in a Parliamentary system are wrong, etc.) grossly offensive and that to me outweighed the arguable economic advantages of a conservative government and Ignatieff's and the Liberal's many shortcomings (including Liberal arrogance and stupidity in refusing to pay attention to how Canadians clearly felt about their leader - choosing him may have been reasonable, but not keeping him this long, they should have gotten rid of him long ago or he should have left, and if their party constitution doesn't allow that, they should have amended it to allow for a U.K.-style forced exit).

On the plus side, while I don't like Layton particularly either, at least the Bloc did extremely poorly, even against those who can't really speak French!