While US President Barack Obama celebrates a ‘good day’ – probably the best one of his presidency so far – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is facing what he had called a ‘useless election’.

A little over a month ago on March 26, the day after Harper’s Conservative government fell due to losing a vote of confidence (145 to 156) in the Parliament, Canadians woke to the news that there is to be a fresh election on May 2. The freshest one to date that is, since this latest trip to the polls will be their fourth one in just seven years.

Prime Minster Harper was livid. He has been warning anyone who is willing to listen that Canadians are being burdened with a needless election after which, unless the Conservative Party receives a majority win, his rivals in the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party (NDP) could combine forces to form a ‘reckless coalition.’

Harper did not say exactly why he believes a left-leaning coalition to be reckless per se, but he has been issuing dire warnings of the economic meltdown and political turmoil that he claims will materialise if his party is not re-elected. (Surprise, surprise)

And in order to be re-elected, the Conservatives have so far gone to great lengths, especially in Ontario which is Canada’s most populous province and therefore has more voters and in turn, more ridings (constituencies) than any other province or territory in the country. In other words: 106 out of a total 308 federal ridings.

It comes as no surprise then that in addition to Harper, the leaders of the other two federal parties – Liberal Party’s Michael Ignatieff and NDP’s Jack Layton – are also devoting considerable amounts of their time and energy to court votes in this province.

And what makes this mad scramble for the province doubly interesting is that up to almost 23 per cent of Ontario’s population consists of visible minorities including South Asians, Iranians, Arabs, Chinese, Blacks and Latin Americans. Visible minority groups, who tend to be concentrated in specific urban areas, hold special significance for politicians in the ridings where they account for a significant percentage of the total population.

Canada’s minorities have traditionally voted for immigration-friendly left-wing parties such as the Liberals and the NDP which tend to back small businesses and social services. But this time around, the Conservative leadership has made a calculated attempt to secure the support of those ethnic groups that they feel will be inclined towards its social and economic policies.

Canada’s 750,000 Muslims and the 133,000 Pakistani Canadians among them are not the Conservatives’ target market, senior Canadian journalist Haroon Siddiqui informed readers in a recent column. Nor are the Conservatives courting members of the Canada’s Arab community, especially not when the Harper government – which has never been shy about displaying its pro-Israel bias – had previously cut federal funding to the Canadian Arab Federation on the grounds that that it was part of the government’s fight against anti-Semitism.

But this did not stop an eager staffer in the Conservative camp from emailing an invitation to the Canadian Arab Federation recently, asking them to send some members to a campaign event dressed in ethnic costumes in order to provide a great ‘photo-op’.

The fury that this incident created pales in comparison to the national political uproar which was created by Betty Granger during the election campaign in 2000. As the Canadian Alliance’s (a past avatar of the Conservative Party) candidate for a riding in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Ms Granger was speaking to a group of university student when she used the term “Asian invasion” – as well as other objectionable language – to describe the presence of the large number of Chinese students and businessmen in the province of British Columbia. She was forced to resign her candidacy almost immediately.

Where are the Liberals in all this? The Liberals who have generally taken the ‘ethnic vote’ for granted are also struggling in the current election campaign. This is due mainly to its lack of strong leadership which is also hurting its prospects among the general voting population. There is also a perception that the current party leader Michael Ignatieff, who returned to Canada only as recently as 2009 after spending many years abroad at Oxford University and Harvard University, is more of a just-left-of-centre liberal than an actual Left-hugging liberal.

This leaves the NDP which has thus far tended to be seen as the third party; the one which will never form a government. But that was before April 24, the day that NDP leader Jack Layton got a hero’s welcome from Toronto’s Sikh community when he appeared at a Khalsa Day parade. Call it a coincidence if you will, but since then the NDP’s fortunes have been steadily on the rise.

So much so that on April 27, just five days before election day, it was estimated to have 28 per cent of voter support throughout the country. That may not sound like very much, but when you consider that the Conservatives are deemed to have 35 per cent of the pie and the Liberals 23 per cent, it is not a small victory. So while the NDP has little hope of forming the government, it could replace the Liberal Party as the official opposition.

Add to this the earlier shocking news that in the province of Quebec the NDP enjoys 36 per cent of predicted votes while the Bloc Québécois -- the party wholly and solely devoted to safeguarding the rights of Quebec -- lags behind it at 31 per cent!

Now, as polls close throughout the country and results start to come in, Canadians are glued to various news media, waiting to see what the future of their country will look like.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.