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So what was that all about?

An unnecessary election produced a stronger Conservative minority government, which is not quite what Prime Minister Stephen Harper had expected.

Mr. Harper sought and expected a majority. Make no mistake about that, despite his protestations that a minority was all the Conservatives could reasonably expect.

The stars were aligned before the campaign for a majority, but his own errors, the retreat of French-speaking Quebeckers into the embrace of the Bloc Québécois, and the economic tsunami of the last two weeks dashed hopes for a majority government, although he came very close to achieving that objective.

Canadians will now endure or relish – depending on their preference – yet another minority government, with the smaller parties in Parliament stronger and the Liberal Party weaker.

Greens did worse than they had hoped, and leader Elizabeth May failed to win a seat in Nova Scotia. New Democrats got about 20 per cent of the popular vote, a strong showing for them, but failed to reap a harvest of many new seats.

Conservatives will be heartened that they won the most seats, thereby remaining in office, but chastened that they failed to secure a majority.

So what does Canada now face, apart from another minority government of necessarily uncertain duration?

Most obviously, Canadians will see a new Liberal leader, sooner or later. Stéphane Dion's Liberals lost ground in Ontario and British Columbia, and so fell much further behind the Conservatives. The party is weakened financially, beaten politically, and split intellectually.

Liberals gave John Turner two tries in 1984 and 1988; they will probably not be so kind to Mr. Dion, whose support in the caucus is quite thin and whose leadership in the country was widely criticized.

Beyond the Liberals' decision, the country will ask how long will this Parliament last? The last Parliament endured longer than its participants had anticipated, and certainly longer than the Harper Conservatives expected.

Expecting an 18- to 24-month parliamentary life, the Conservatives emptied the cupboard of their electoral promises, which explained in part why in this campaign they had so little to offer.

With a minority Parliament, Canadians can expect more wheeling, dealing, negotiating, intra-party bickering and finger-pointing among the parties. Such is the nature of minority governments, when no previous arrangements have been made among or between parties to co-operate. Such will especially be the nature of this minority government with severe economic dislocations ahead and cavernous divergences among parties as to what remedies are required.

Indeed, the slightly improved results for the NDP and another strong showing by the Bloc Québécois will embolden them to believe their policy prescriptions were endorsed by more voters than ever.

Their challenge, or dilemma, will be to determine the degree to which they should compromise their platforms in the interests of avoiding another election that very few Canadians will want, versus the strong desire of their advocates to insist on the wisdom and urgency of what they offered in the campaign.

Then, there is the economic tsunami. No one knows if the worst is over, but considerable damage has been done to the U.S. (and world) economy, damage from which Canada cannot remain immune.

The borrowings, uncertainties, and the considerable pain should mean the eventual bonfire of the election promises for all parties – although that opposition parties, not required to govern, will be reluctant to modify their electoral nostrums.

The Conservatives, as government, will have no choice but to confront the gap between reality and their promises. One of their first decisions will be whether to run a deficit, despite electoral promises to balance the books. Having all but eliminated the fiscal cushion designed to protect the budget against economic shocks, the government might have to incur a deficit or cut spending in a much more serious fashion than anything done since 2006.

Then, there is the Bloc Québécois, a party in Parliament but not of governance, a group with only one interest – that of Quebec – in an institution theoretically designed to merge local interests into a national one. How to bring French-speaking Quebeckers back into being interested in governing Canada remains a serious, destabilizing conundrum to which no answer has appeared in the past 15 years. The Bloc lost a small share of the popular vote, compared with 2006, but still won by far the largest number of seats in Quebec.

Mr. Harper tried lavishing attention and money on Quebec but eventually failed to impress Quebeckers. That failure cost him the majority. With diminished representation from Quebec, relations between that province and the rest of Canada will be rife for misunderstandings and resentments.

Inevitably, the election will lead to backroom but stillborn questions about Mr. Harper. He still totally dominates the government and the Conservative Party he worked to create. He has led the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party, and lost one election while winning two minorities.

His defenders will insist that two minorities in such a fractured political culture is a fine feat, worthy of his continuation as leader. They will point to surveys showing that he remains the highest regarded political leader in Canada. They will argue, correctly, that the party gained seats.

His detractors, quietly, will wonder why the party could not win a majority against such a weak Liberal Leader as Stéphane Dion. But the skeptics' grumbles will go nowhere, because Mr. Harper is utterly safe as Conservative Leader.

Mr. Harper will survive, of course, but Mr. Dion is finished. His leadership-approval ratings were terrible. He irritated many caucus members, and lacks more than a palace guard of supporters.

The party has a convention scheduled for next May, at which party rules will require a vote on whether Liberals want a leadership review. At this point, seven months or so from that convention, Mr. Dion would appear to be atop a snow bank in spring.

Liberal MPs Bob Rae and Michel Ignatieff, both of whom held their seats, will be the names on Liberal lips as contenders again. But no one should rule out the return of former deputy prime minister John Manley, or former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, either of whom could win the leadership while taking the party back toward the centre of the political spectrum.