Canadians Move Right, Elect New Leadership

He also managed to appeal to voters in Quebec, breaking a lock on the province's seats that had been held by the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc, which advocates separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada, appeared to have lost three seats from its current strength of 53 seats, according to partial returns.

The fourth-largest party, the National Democratic Party, which has championed social liberalism, appeared to have added 11 seats to its current bloc of 18.

The election of Harper, who represents Calgary, Alberta, also marks a historic shift of power from the traditional centers in the east to the energy-rich and increasingly affluent western provinces.

"We really have gone from two basic regions, Quebec and Ontario, to three with the West, in which there is a new center of power in Alberta," said Reginald Stuart, a Canadian political scientist.

Martin's ambition to remain prime minister was threatened by the disclosure of a kickback scheme surrounding his Liberal Party predecessor, and by the growing sense among Canadian voters that his party had been in power too long.

Harper hammered on that theme in the campaign, painting the ruling party as arrogant and suffused with what he dubbed "a sense of entitlement."

The tactic worked, and Martin spent much of the campaign defending his integrity. Martin was not personally involved in the scandal, in which aides of former prime minister Jean Chretien are alleged to have steered lucrative advertising contracts to political cronies who then funneled money back to Liberal political campaigns. Martin pleaded with voters to remember that he had ordered the public investigation into the allegations and fired officials named in the probe.

Appearing increasingly desperate as opinion polls showed his party losing, Martin lashed out at Harper, portraying him as an "American-style" neoconservative with a hidden agenda at odds with Canadians.

Martin warned that Harper would try to reverse last year's vote legalizing same-sex marriage, would seek to erode abortion rights and would pack the judiciary with conservative judges.

Harper stayed above the fray, insisting that those social issues were not on his agenda. Instead, he promised to slightly reduce the national sales tax, replace a sputtering national day-care program with direct payments to parents and increase penalties for gun-related crimes.

He vowed to give more power to provinces and suggested a change that would open the first crack in Canada's traditionally sacrosanct national health care program. He proposes giving patients a right to seek outside care if they are required to wait too long for a health care procedure in the national system.

Harper also is seen as ideologically closer to the Bush administration than is the Liberal Party, which balked at joining the invasion of Iraq and refused to sign on to the U.S. plan to develop an antiballistic missile system for North America. Harper has suggested he might revisit the missile defense decision and has said Canada would reject the Kyoto accord on global warming, as the Bush administration has done.

But some Canadians said they believed Harper would still try to enact a conservative social agenda.

"I would do anything to stop the Conservatives," said Phillip Clarkson, 53, a costume designer in Toronto. "I am gay. I want to be married someday. And I want there to be the opportunity to do it."