We suggested prior to the vote that Jamaica and her partners in the Caribbean Community needed to pay close attention to last week's general election in Canada.

Now, we feel it of even greater importance that they pay attention to its outcome and follow closely how events unfold in Ottawa. For it is a time of great uncertainty for a partner which this region could trust implicitly.

Unfortunately, in recent times trust, especially in one significant and important circumstance, was placed under severe stress. There have, of course, been attempts to repair that relationship. With a new government in Ottawa, though, the Caribbean has good reason to be circumspect about how events will unfold.

For the fact is Mr Stephen Harper, the new prime minister, and the Conservative Party which he leads, are unknown quantities. Or, perhaps more to the point, no one, not least us, is sure which quantity Mr Harper and the Conservatives represent.

When Canadians previously voted in a national election 18 months ago and Mr Paul Martin's Liberals scraped home with a minority administration, Mr Harper was clear where he stood - on the hard right of Canadian politics. His agenda, by and large, was congruent with that of the administration that leads Canada's powerful neighbour to the south.

Mr Harper, for instance, had no quarrel with the war in Iraq, which the majority of Canadians opposed; he was willing to bring Canada under the umbrella of a kind of Star Wars defence system; he was edgy about abortion and other liberal agenda issues and so on.

This time round, Mr Harper appeared a new package, playing down the right-wing agenda and focussing more on the sleaze that dogged the Liberals, who were in government for a dozen years.

In the end, Canadians ignored their ongoing economic prosperity, achieved during the time of the Liberals, and punished the ruling party for the corruption that marred the time of Mr Martin's predecessor, Jean Chretien. Mr Martin was unable to mount neither effective nor credible defence.

The issue from a foreign policy stand point now is which of the Mr Harpers will emerge in the months ahead. Until Mr Chretien's major faux pas on Haiti in rejecting Caricom's thoughtful and nuanced initiative to end the constitutional crisis and prevent the coup d'etat against Mr Aristide, Canada could be depended on for foreign policy responses that appreciated and respected the concerns of small, weak and vulnerable states. Indeed, the Canadians, in framing policy, made the point that they were not clones of their powerful neighbour. Which, of course made sense.

For the Canadians, given the relative power between themselves and their neighbour, appreciated the concern of the underdog. Moreover, its membership of the Commonwealth gave it a textured understanding of the concept of plurality and insistence of poor, weak countries on the right to self-assertion.

The issue now is whether a Canadian government led by Mr Harper will envision this context or walk heavily and in step with an ideology that insists on the assertion of power as a credible tool of foreign policy. Time will tell.

Hopefully, though, the innate good sense of Canadians will prevail. As well as the fact that Mr Harper's Conservatives don't have the parliamentary votes to go on adventures without the help of others.

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