Paul Martin, who was once an excellent finance minister and who balanced the budget, had to suffer the legacy of his own government, which included 10 years of scandal, patronage, stealing and lying and at a level that Canadians had never experienced before. Corruption was so great that an international body that tracks corruption worldwide, dropped Canada from the fifth least corrupt country in the world to the 11th. And that rating was made before the $100 million sponsorship scandal surfaced.

So, what did Martin do about it? He launched an investigation that stonewalled questions and refused to make public reporton the matter. He said in the all-candidates debate that he "will get to the bottom of this" but has done everything to hide the bottom of this. At least the Conservative supporters in 1993 knew enough to punish their party by not voting for them for one term. Liberal Party supporters, on the other hand, appeared eager to honor a carry on of corruption.

To obscure that little point about government rot, Martin started the mud slinging. It’s an old trick based on the axiom that when all else fails, call your opponent names. The Martin team attempted back flips to make Conservative leader Stephen Harper look like a red neck. By examining election results it has worked among so many people that it confirms Canada’s population is divided pretty much into four groups: Small-C conservatives (most distinguishing feature is their belief in absolute truth), Quebecors (they believe in Quebec), small-L liberals (they believe in moral relativism) and the confused (includes the 25 per cent of voters who hadn’t decided who to vote for two days prior the election).

Harper had clear ideas on what he wanted to do. Boost our decrepit military. Spur business by lowering taxes and stop government handouts to business. Have Parliament, not the courts, make the laws. Give all parents tax credits to allow them to decide whether or not to use them for daycare or for stay-at-home parents. Allow a free vote in Parliament on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Liberals launched an attack on the Conservative Party, exaggerating and lying about Harper’s platform and calling him extremist. How ironic that in the face of disagreement the Liberal scream is incessant: "We’re right. Shut up." If anyone’s extreme, it’s a position that refuses debate.

In the final days leading up to the election, even some left-leaning newspapers came to the defence of Harper.

"The job of prime minister should go to Stephen Harper," said the editorial board at The Ottawa Citizen. "Mr. Harper is campaigning on a platform of transparency and accountability. The record of his private and public life suggests he is genuinely committed to those values."

The Citizen was bang-on in defending Harper, explaining, "Mr. Harper believes a dollar in the hands of a taxpayer is generally better spent than a dollar in government coffers; he believes public institutions should not be patronage bodies; he believes national sovereignty is eroding when a country lacks a functioning military. And he believes that elected legislators, rather than unelected judges, should make law. Some may call these ideas ‘conservative.’ We call them democratic and self-evident."

The editorial board of the The National Post was more insistent, urging voters with its headline "On June 28, vote Conservative."

An Ipsos-Reid poll revealed that farmers were expected to vote overwhelmingly for the Conservatives and in rural eastern Ontario and east central Ontario they did. It’s good to know that the rural communities east of Toronto didn’t endorse five more years of scandal.