When I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, this October at the time of their federal elections for the House of Commons, I was curious about how Canadian elections differed from our own. Who were the political personalities in the elections? And just what effect did events in the United States have, including Wall Street’s economic meltdown? And what about changing demographics and economic growth patterns in Canada?

I reviewed a few basics. Canada’s head of government, the prime minister, is the leader of the party that gains the most seats in the lower house in Parliament, the House of Commons. He must win his own seat. Seats are apportioned by population count into electoral districts or “ridings” by a non-partisan commission. Traditionally, the population centers of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have dominated the seats in the House. Together they control 181 of the 308 seats.

What makes the bicameral system in Canada especially different from ours is that no federal elections for the upper house (Senate) seats are held. The appointment system inherited from the British still pertains and appointees can keep their seats until they are 75 years old. Our U.S. Senators, elected every six years, two per state regardless of geographic size or population, provide a balance to our House seats apportioned by population.

Canada lacks that balance. No wonder that Canadian Western and Northeastern provinces have long complained that their voices and needs are underrepresented in Parliament.

Canada has multiple parties, down in number from 11 in 2000 to five today. Those contesting this year for House of Common seats were: The right of center Conservative Party; the centrist Liberal Party, the francophone Bloc Quebecois, the leftist National Democratic Party (NDP) and the relatively new Green Party. Quebec Province voters are traditionally wooed by the Conservatives and Liberals for extra needed seats.

In recent years, no party has gained a majority, however. In 2006, the Conservative Party replaced the Liberal Party in leading a minority government. The Conservative Party’s young leader from Calgary, Stephen Harper, is Canada’s prime minister.

Indeed, Harper called the Oct. 14 election in early September because he gambled his party could finally win a majority in the House of Commons. In early September, Canada’s economy was fine. The biggest rival, the Liberal Party, seemed in leadership disarray. And there was some conjecture that the Conservatives wanted a race before Canadians might be swept up in the message of change articulated by Sen. Barack Obama in the U.S.

But when the votes were counted, Harper’s gamble for a majority failed by 12 seats. His party did gain 19 seats, primarily in the sprawling ethnic suburbs, heavily Asian and South Indian, of Vancouver and Toronto. It won well, too, in rural communities. But it did not gain in urban centers. It was shut out in northeastern Newfoundland and Labrador because of disputes with the Conservative government over oil and gas contracts. And it did not win needed seats in Quebec as it anticipated. Harper must continue ruling with a minority government.

The Wall Street meltdown came out of the blue during the election campaign and seriously jinxed Harper’s chances. While Canada’s banking system is very sound and its government budget balanced, its stock market took a dive like everywhere else. Canada exports too many goods to the U.S. to be immune. Voters worried and seemed to back away from a greater Conservative endorsement. Harper also committed some gaffes, such as alienating Quebec voters by supporting a large cut before the elections in the cultural programs they adore.

The October voter turnout was deemed the poorest in recent history. This was the third election in four years so there was clearly a voter weariness. The campaigns lacked clear focus. The parties also seemed to me to lack charismatic leaders.

Harper, portrayed as a young party technocrat and family man, didn’t seem very sure-footed in his campaign and never did articulate a policy toward the economic crisis generated from Wall Street. Nonetheless, the Conservative Party seemed ahead of the other parties in building a national rather than just a regional party.

The Liberal Party’s Stephan Dion seemed totally unsuited to be a politician. He is an intellectual from Quebec whose poor, mumbled English hindered his national appeal, and he made a mistake in making an unpopular carbon tax the basis of his platform. Liberal voters stayed home in droves. The Liberals hope that the election of Justin Trudeau, son of the famous Pierre Trudeau of yesteryear, will boost their appeal in the future. And a leadership shake-up is in store.

Gilles Duceppe leads the francophone Bloc Quebecois which to his great glee gained two seats. He therefore made clear to the press that he was not going to be a lacky of the Harper government. The Bloc, with just 10 percent of the national vote, sits pretty in the House with 50 seats.

Jack Layton of the NDP was open about his ambition to be prime minister and tried to take his campaign beyond the party’s traditional roots in organized labor to the urban middle class. He did boost NDP seat numbers by seven. But analysts did not see the NDP as a serious competitor, now or later, to the Conservative and Liberal parties.

The Green Party is led by the American-born Elizabeth May, who founded the Sierra Club in Canada. She had a high public profile in the election, but she appeared foolish in running for her seat against the defense minister, a conservative, in Nova Scotia. She lost big time. Economic issues trumped environmental issues during the campaign. The Green Party failed to regain even the one seat that it had. But it had almost a million votes nationally and is expected to run candidates again.

The upshot is that Canada’s current political system is still rigged toward the old line population centers of Ontario and Quebec while the economic importance of Western and Northeastern Canada is zooming forward. Alberta Province, just north of Montana and home to the prime minister, has today almost two million people in the prosperous Calgary to Edmonton corridor. The province has oil, refineries and the potential of its oil sands. Vancouver, British Columbia, will have the very latest in infrastructure and world publicity in hosting the Winter Olympics in 2010. The once poor Newfoundland and Labrador Province has new offshore oil finds.

There is particular resentment in Western provinces about Quebec. One Vancouver columnist said bitterly: “Old, proud, sullen, stubborn, self-obsessed with the guilt inducing arrogance of the perpetual victim, it squats discontented between the dual Rest of Canada, geographically smug, its importance permanently swollen above that of all other provinces and regions – notably above the West that subsidizes its chronic economic under-performance and its vaunted grandiosity and that will never have anything like Quebec’s prestige and clout in the national political order.”

The question for the future, then, is how Canada’s European oriented political system and parties will adapt to the new economic realities and changing demographics, in particular large numbers of Asian and South Asian immigrants.Ambassador Harriet Isom grew up in Pendleton and has retired to the family ranch. She was a career diplomat serving in Asia and Africa from 1961 to 1996.