The results of the so-called "election about nothing" have changed little overall in Ottawa, but they represent a major switch for the people of 撸奶社区and the Sea to Sky Corridor as a whole.John Weston came to power on his second attempt Tuesday night in a surprise finish. Not that the result itself was shocking: with former Liberal Blair Wilson splitting the vote as a Green with late entry Liberal Ian Sutherland and stand-in NDP candidate Bill Forst, the riding was Weston's to lose.But the margin of victory certainly was a surprise. In a riding where the winner has scraped by his opponent by 1,000 votes or less in the last two campaigns, this was a blowout. Not only did voters fail to coalesce around either Sutherland or Wilson as both had urged, but even if they had, Weston would still have won, with nearly 50 per cent of the total vote in the riding - reminiscent of the 90s-era majorities John Reynolds used to rack up here.The major difference between Weston's victory and Reynolds's wins is where it puts him: for the first time in 15 years, we will have a federal representative on the government benches as opposed to the opposition. Ever since the federal election of 1993, the voters from this area have gone against the national trend, electing Reformers and Alliance MPs during the Liberal reign, then finally switching to the Liberals two years ago just in time to see the Conservatives come to power in Ottawa.Since 2004, when the riding became closely contested, the defeated candidate whose party was in power has become a surrogate government representative, accompanying cabinet ministers on trips to the riding to help solve local issues - with the clear hint that he could do more if the voters sent him to Ottawa to work from the inside. That MP-in-waiting tactic helped push Wilson over the top in 2006 after he narrowly lost in 2004 - but ended up in opposition and unable to deliver on those unspoken promises.Weston, on the other hand, is our man not only in Ottawa, but in the government. Now it's time to see if that really makes a difference to the people of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. Will the long-hinted-at largesse of being on the government team come to fruition? Or will we never hear from Mr. Weston again now that he's served his primary function of growing the Conservative caucus? The fact that the Conservatives are back with a minority government, and the coming spotlight on our area in 2010, gives us hope that we won't be taken for granted. But we'll just have to wait and see if the grass really is greener on the government's side of the fence.We'll be watching.
