Update #1: Progressive Conservative Party of Canada leadership election, 1993 and Canadian federal election, 1993
When I first signed-up on the wonderful forum, I immediately started a little TL entitled Redemption: A Political Comeback Story. As you all know, it was pretty horrible and it was never finished (Something that I no doubt have become known for doing). As it was my first story I always felt a special connection to it, and often times I'd revisit it, just to see how far I've come. These last few months I've been sketching out an infobox timeline revamp for my original story, and the ever-fantastical @LeinadB93 has been gracious enough to assist me in this endeavour. @True Grit and @RogueBeaver have been kind enough to offer me counsel as well.
So, without further ado, please enjoy the first instalment of my new work, Lazarus, Icarus, and Canadian Politics.
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When first elected in 1984, Brian Mulroney seemed prepared to transform the political landscape, with the Progressive Conservatives poised to become Canada’s new “Natural Governing Party”. Nine years later, with numerous scandals, a ballooning deficit, the introduction of the GST, failed constitutional negotiations and referendum, Mulroney had become the most unpopular Prime Minister in Canadian political polling history. By 1991 only 15 per cent of the nation approved of the Tory leader, a far cry from the 50 per cent who gave him his overwhelming 211-seat majority in ’84. Making matters worse, the grand coalition that Mulroney had created had begun to split apart, as evident by the creation of the Reform Party and the sovereigntist Bloc Quebecois, the latter of which was now lead by his former lieutenant and friend Lucien Bouchard. With almost no chance at winning re-election, Mulroney announced his retirement in February 1993 with a leadership election scheduled for June of that year. Whoever became leader then had the unenvious task of facing Liberal leader Jean Chretien in a matter of months.
The ensuing leadership contest initially seemed to be little more than a coronation for the candidate many viewed as the frontrunner, Justice Minister Kim Campbell. With such momentum other potential candidates, such as fellow cabinet ministers Perrin Beatty, Barbara McDougall, Michael Wilson, Joe Clark, and Bernard Valcourt, opted against challenging Campbell. The only serious challenger, Environment Minister Jean Charest, had to be convinced to run by Mulroney himself. Yet upon his entrance into the race, Charest proved to be an energetic campaigner, garnering the endorsements of various high-leveled Tory insiders and elected officials. By the time of the convention polling showed the race to be deadlocked between the two cabinet ministers. With the support of fellow leadership candidates Patrick Boyer and Jim Edwards, Charest pulled off what many political analysts described as the upset of the decade, narrowly defeating Campbell 51-49 percent. At only thirty-five Jean Charest had broken the record set by Joe Clark fourteen years earlier and became the youngest Prime Minister in Canadian history.
Following Charest’s victory, the Progressive Conservatives enjoyed a surge in support, which was quickly dubbed “Charestmania” by Canada’s political press. The new Prime Minister used the summer break from Parliament to attend every event, barbeque, and Canada Day celebration that he could in order to connect with voters. With polls showing the Tories either tied or ahead of the Liberals, with the Tory leader’s approvals far ahead of Liberal leader Jean Chretien, some began to wonder if Charest would pull off the comeback that their British counterparts had done only a year earlier.
Despite the fact that the government had been in power for almost a decade, typically the point where voters throw them out, Canada’s opposition parties found themselves in a difficult situation. The New Democrats, after having come close to making significant breakthroughs during the ’84 and ’88 elections, had seen their provincial branches in British Columbia, and more surprisingly Ontario, elected to power. However as quickly as they won, both provincial governments became quickly unpopular with voters, which in turn affected attitudes towards the federal party. As well, the party had succeeded in election their first ever Quebec MP through a by-election in 1990. However, the party’s new leader, Yukon MP Audrey McLaughlin, had used the opportunity presented by the failure of Charlottetown Accord to begin the process of building operations in Quebec, which in turn damaged the party’s standing out west. With three of the five major party leaders from Quebec, there was little hope for the NDP to make any significant breakthrough. The Liberals meanwhile were still trying to heal the wounds of internal strife. For years John Turner and Jean Chretien battled for influence and power in the Liberal Party. Now that Turner had retired, Chretien found himself at odds with a new opponent, fellow Quebec MP Paul Martin, whom he had bested in the leadership election of 1990 in Calgary. Bitterness and resentment highlighted that campaign, and for tears following the result it seemed as though the wounds had yet to completely heal. The party was hemorrhaging cash and Chretien’s performance as opposition was labeled as being mediocre at best and indecisive at worst, as demonstrated through his response to the Oka standoff. What was worse was that the party had suffered numerous defections to the Bloc Quebecois, Chretien himself was deeply unpopular in Quebec due in part to his opposition to Meech Lake, and until December 1990, seven months after winning the leadership, that we won a seat to re-enter parliament. What was originally a Liberal lead of 50 per cent melted into trailing to Conservatives at 32 per cent. While many Liberal party insiders credited the poor mismanagement to Chretien’s chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg, few believed that changing staff members would send the right message to voters or magically transform Chretien into a wondrous leader. As a result, many prayed that voter fatigue with the Tories would be their ticket back onto the government benches.
Voters also had to deal with the fact that, unlike 1988, there were more viable options this time around. In Quebec the Bloc Quebecois seemed prepared to scoop up the support of Quebecers disappointed by the failure of Meech and disillusioned with the rest of Canada. Out west Preston Manning and the Reform Party played a similar tune, alienation by the federal government that was in their minds both too Progressive and not Conservative enough. In 1989 Deborah Grey had won a by-election in Tory Edmonton, giving the Reform Party its first MP and firing a strike against the bow of the seemingly invincible Tory warship. Support for the Tories, which many westerners believed was too focused on Quebec, began to drop even further following the election of yet another Quebecer to the Prime Minister’s Office. With this in mind, it seemed the only option left to Charest was to maintain his party’s coalition of voters in Ontario and Quebec. Not impossible, but incredibly difficult, especially in the case of the latter where it was a three-way race between the Tories, the Liberals, and the Bloc.
On Monday, September 13 Charest asked Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn to dissolve parliament. At Rideau Hall Charest pledged that if the government was returned with a majority Canada would return to a balanced budget by 1997/1998 and unemployment would be brought down “significantly”. The Prime Minister’s lack of details in his opening campaign address provided early ammunition for the opposition parties.
Luckily for the Liberal Party, their finances had rebounded considerably since their low of 1991. While the party still trailed the Tories, the party had managed to scrape enough cash together to create ads, signs, and more importantly pay staffers and support volunteers. Unfortunately, the Liberals focus on strengthening their war chest had meant less time was spent on drafting an election platform, which would not be released until halfway through the campaign. The Tories organization, however, had managed to accomplish their leader’s directive and distributed literature to all riding campaigns, which stressed what the Prime Minister called a “unified message for strengthening Canada”. Headed by John Tory and Allan Gregg, the Conservative campaign primarily focused on the issues of the economy, job creation, and strengthening Canadian unity. Unfortunately for the Tories their record on each issue was abysmal. The economy had entered into a recession, unemployment was on the rise, and as a result of Mulroney’s failure to pass constitutional changes, Canada had witnessed the re-emergence of Quebec separatism. Wherever Jean Charest went, the spectre of Brian Mulroney followed. Luckily enough, Charest’s blistering attacks against the Bloc, which the country had first seen during the leadership campaign, combined with his personal popularity, meant that the Tories had for the most part emerged as the main federalist alternative to the Bloc Quebecois, much to the chagrin of the Liberals. If the Tories convinced Quebecers that they were the only hope of stopping the Bloc from sweeping Quebec, Liberals worried that their own voters would jump ship in the name of national unity.
The Reform Party’s popularity meanwhile seemed restricted primarily to ridings out West and in British Columbia. Although they had originally been created as a response to western alienation, Reform quickly became the vehicle for populists eager to implement a more social conservative agenda, not to mention rip up the GST. Many western conservatives believed that with the election of the second straight Quebec Tory leader, the Progressive Conservatives cared little for their opinion and were instead more interested in keeping their seats in Ontario and Quebec, as exampled by Charest’s pledge to recognize Quebec’s status as a distinct society within Canada. While the Reform Party lacked the Tories financial war chest, their frugal appearance endeared them all the more to fiscal conservatives. Unfortunately for Preston Manning, his party was generally viewed as being too extreme for most of the country, evident by the reaction to Ontario candidate John Beck’s anti-immigrant comments.
Without question the most important issue of the entire election was that of the economy. While the Tories mismanagement damaged their credibility, the Liberals initial inability to raise funds, as well as their brief proximity to bankruptcy earlier in the decade provided many voters with worry over whether or not the Liberals were up to the challenge of cleaning up the Tories’ mess. Chretien’s opposition to NAFTA won support amongst Canada’s political left, but conjured up worries that the Liberal leader would reopen a debate that most Canadians believed and wanted to stay close.
The two leader’s debates were generally regarded as tame affair, with none of the major party leaders, with the exception of the Reform Party and NDP, wishing to upset an already volatile situation. Polling showed that that the Liberals had, despite their poor campaign, garnered a modest lead over the Tories, whose ambiguous platform had left some voters shaking their heads. Still, Jean Chretien proved to be a poor debater in both official languages, and contrast with the younger, more telegenic Charest played into the Tories strategy of portraying the Liberal leader as a man of the past and the Prime Minister as a leader of the future. Polls and analysts gave the debates, narrowly, to Charest and Lucien Bouchard, the latter of whom had landed a blow against Charest for avoiding to comment on the actual deficit numbers in the 1993 budget.
Playing into the Tories hand, the Liberals launched a series of attack ads against Charest, criticizing his age and inexperience. At one point the narrator suggested that the Prime Minister was “a child” and had “no business representing Canada at the grown-ups table”. While some voters found the ad appealing, a great many more, especially younger voters, found the attack offensive. The ad quickly received national attention, with some Liberal candidate even publically disassociating themselves with their party’s commercial. Eventually even Chretien himself was forced to apologize, claiming that despite some reports he had not cleared the ad personally. The justification further cemented the notion in some voter’s minds that the Liberal’s campaign was disorganized. While the Tories were still deeply unpopular for implementing the GST and their contributions towards the recession, some saw the attack against the Prime Minister as bitter and desperate, and gave the governing party a few extra points in the polls, enough to retake the lead from the Liberals.
On Election Night voters produced the narrowest victory since Pierre Trudeau’s two-seat win over Robert Stanfield in 1972. Although decimated out West and in parts of Atlantic Canada, the Progressive Conservatives were re-elected to a minority government, 107 seats to the Liberal’s 93, a gain of only ten since the last election. The major beneficiary of the PC’s western collapse, Reform won the popular vote from British Columbia to Manitoba, nearly sweeping the province of Alberta for a total of 52 seats and third place in parliament. Audrey McLaughlin and the NDP meanwhile faced an embarrassing defeat, losing official party status by only one seat. In Quebec, Lucien Bouchard and the Bloc found their momentum stunted, with many federalists, and a large number of nationalists, coalescing behind the Tories to block them. The Conservative coalition of Ontario and Quebec was battered, but it had held. Jean Charest had won his first election, with a second campaign only just around the corner.
Amidst the shock, jubilation, and tears, phone calls were being made at a hotel room in Montreal.
So, without further ado, please enjoy the first instalment of my new work, Lazarus, Icarus, and Canadian Politics.
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When first elected in 1984, Brian Mulroney seemed prepared to transform the political landscape, with the Progressive Conservatives poised to become Canada’s new “Natural Governing Party”. Nine years later, with numerous scandals, a ballooning deficit, the introduction of the GST, failed constitutional negotiations and referendum, Mulroney had become the most unpopular Prime Minister in Canadian political polling history. By 1991 only 15 per cent of the nation approved of the Tory leader, a far cry from the 50 per cent who gave him his overwhelming 211-seat majority in ’84. Making matters worse, the grand coalition that Mulroney had created had begun to split apart, as evident by the creation of the Reform Party and the sovereigntist Bloc Quebecois, the latter of which was now lead by his former lieutenant and friend Lucien Bouchard. With almost no chance at winning re-election, Mulroney announced his retirement in February 1993 with a leadership election scheduled for June of that year. Whoever became leader then had the unenvious task of facing Liberal leader Jean Chretien in a matter of months.
The ensuing leadership contest initially seemed to be little more than a coronation for the candidate many viewed as the frontrunner, Justice Minister Kim Campbell. With such momentum other potential candidates, such as fellow cabinet ministers Perrin Beatty, Barbara McDougall, Michael Wilson, Joe Clark, and Bernard Valcourt, opted against challenging Campbell. The only serious challenger, Environment Minister Jean Charest, had to be convinced to run by Mulroney himself. Yet upon his entrance into the race, Charest proved to be an energetic campaigner, garnering the endorsements of various high-leveled Tory insiders and elected officials. By the time of the convention polling showed the race to be deadlocked between the two cabinet ministers. With the support of fellow leadership candidates Patrick Boyer and Jim Edwards, Charest pulled off what many political analysts described as the upset of the decade, narrowly defeating Campbell 51-49 percent. At only thirty-five Jean Charest had broken the record set by Joe Clark fourteen years earlier and became the youngest Prime Minister in Canadian history.
Following Charest’s victory, the Progressive Conservatives enjoyed a surge in support, which was quickly dubbed “Charestmania” by Canada’s political press. The new Prime Minister used the summer break from Parliament to attend every event, barbeque, and Canada Day celebration that he could in order to connect with voters. With polls showing the Tories either tied or ahead of the Liberals, with the Tory leader’s approvals far ahead of Liberal leader Jean Chretien, some began to wonder if Charest would pull off the comeback that their British counterparts had done only a year earlier.
Despite the fact that the government had been in power for almost a decade, typically the point where voters throw them out, Canada’s opposition parties found themselves in a difficult situation. The New Democrats, after having come close to making significant breakthroughs during the ’84 and ’88 elections, had seen their provincial branches in British Columbia, and more surprisingly Ontario, elected to power. However as quickly as they won, both provincial governments became quickly unpopular with voters, which in turn affected attitudes towards the federal party. As well, the party had succeeded in election their first ever Quebec MP through a by-election in 1990. However, the party’s new leader, Yukon MP Audrey McLaughlin, had used the opportunity presented by the failure of Charlottetown Accord to begin the process of building operations in Quebec, which in turn damaged the party’s standing out west. With three of the five major party leaders from Quebec, there was little hope for the NDP to make any significant breakthrough. The Liberals meanwhile were still trying to heal the wounds of internal strife. For years John Turner and Jean Chretien battled for influence and power in the Liberal Party. Now that Turner had retired, Chretien found himself at odds with a new opponent, fellow Quebec MP Paul Martin, whom he had bested in the leadership election of 1990 in Calgary. Bitterness and resentment highlighted that campaign, and for tears following the result it seemed as though the wounds had yet to completely heal. The party was hemorrhaging cash and Chretien’s performance as opposition was labeled as being mediocre at best and indecisive at worst, as demonstrated through his response to the Oka standoff. What was worse was that the party had suffered numerous defections to the Bloc Quebecois, Chretien himself was deeply unpopular in Quebec due in part to his opposition to Meech Lake, and until December 1990, seven months after winning the leadership, that we won a seat to re-enter parliament. What was originally a Liberal lead of 50 per cent melted into trailing to Conservatives at 32 per cent. While many Liberal party insiders credited the poor mismanagement to Chretien’s chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg, few believed that changing staff members would send the right message to voters or magically transform Chretien into a wondrous leader. As a result, many prayed that voter fatigue with the Tories would be their ticket back onto the government benches.
Voters also had to deal with the fact that, unlike 1988, there were more viable options this time around. In Quebec the Bloc Quebecois seemed prepared to scoop up the support of Quebecers disappointed by the failure of Meech and disillusioned with the rest of Canada. Out west Preston Manning and the Reform Party played a similar tune, alienation by the federal government that was in their minds both too Progressive and not Conservative enough. In 1989 Deborah Grey had won a by-election in Tory Edmonton, giving the Reform Party its first MP and firing a strike against the bow of the seemingly invincible Tory warship. Support for the Tories, which many westerners believed was too focused on Quebec, began to drop even further following the election of yet another Quebecer to the Prime Minister’s Office. With this in mind, it seemed the only option left to Charest was to maintain his party’s coalition of voters in Ontario and Quebec. Not impossible, but incredibly difficult, especially in the case of the latter where it was a three-way race between the Tories, the Liberals, and the Bloc.
On Monday, September 13 Charest asked Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn to dissolve parliament. At Rideau Hall Charest pledged that if the government was returned with a majority Canada would return to a balanced budget by 1997/1998 and unemployment would be brought down “significantly”. The Prime Minister’s lack of details in his opening campaign address provided early ammunition for the opposition parties.
Luckily for the Liberal Party, their finances had rebounded considerably since their low of 1991. While the party still trailed the Tories, the party had managed to scrape enough cash together to create ads, signs, and more importantly pay staffers and support volunteers. Unfortunately, the Liberals focus on strengthening their war chest had meant less time was spent on drafting an election platform, which would not be released until halfway through the campaign. The Tories organization, however, had managed to accomplish their leader’s directive and distributed literature to all riding campaigns, which stressed what the Prime Minister called a “unified message for strengthening Canada”. Headed by John Tory and Allan Gregg, the Conservative campaign primarily focused on the issues of the economy, job creation, and strengthening Canadian unity. Unfortunately for the Tories their record on each issue was abysmal. The economy had entered into a recession, unemployment was on the rise, and as a result of Mulroney’s failure to pass constitutional changes, Canada had witnessed the re-emergence of Quebec separatism. Wherever Jean Charest went, the spectre of Brian Mulroney followed. Luckily enough, Charest’s blistering attacks against the Bloc, which the country had first seen during the leadership campaign, combined with his personal popularity, meant that the Tories had for the most part emerged as the main federalist alternative to the Bloc Quebecois, much to the chagrin of the Liberals. If the Tories convinced Quebecers that they were the only hope of stopping the Bloc from sweeping Quebec, Liberals worried that their own voters would jump ship in the name of national unity.
The Reform Party’s popularity meanwhile seemed restricted primarily to ridings out West and in British Columbia. Although they had originally been created as a response to western alienation, Reform quickly became the vehicle for populists eager to implement a more social conservative agenda, not to mention rip up the GST. Many western conservatives believed that with the election of the second straight Quebec Tory leader, the Progressive Conservatives cared little for their opinion and were instead more interested in keeping their seats in Ontario and Quebec, as exampled by Charest’s pledge to recognize Quebec’s status as a distinct society within Canada. While the Reform Party lacked the Tories financial war chest, their frugal appearance endeared them all the more to fiscal conservatives. Unfortunately for Preston Manning, his party was generally viewed as being too extreme for most of the country, evident by the reaction to Ontario candidate John Beck’s anti-immigrant comments.
Without question the most important issue of the entire election was that of the economy. While the Tories mismanagement damaged their credibility, the Liberals initial inability to raise funds, as well as their brief proximity to bankruptcy earlier in the decade provided many voters with worry over whether or not the Liberals were up to the challenge of cleaning up the Tories’ mess. Chretien’s opposition to NAFTA won support amongst Canada’s political left, but conjured up worries that the Liberal leader would reopen a debate that most Canadians believed and wanted to stay close.
The two leader’s debates were generally regarded as tame affair, with none of the major party leaders, with the exception of the Reform Party and NDP, wishing to upset an already volatile situation. Polling showed that that the Liberals had, despite their poor campaign, garnered a modest lead over the Tories, whose ambiguous platform had left some voters shaking their heads. Still, Jean Chretien proved to be a poor debater in both official languages, and contrast with the younger, more telegenic Charest played into the Tories strategy of portraying the Liberal leader as a man of the past and the Prime Minister as a leader of the future. Polls and analysts gave the debates, narrowly, to Charest and Lucien Bouchard, the latter of whom had landed a blow against Charest for avoiding to comment on the actual deficit numbers in the 1993 budget.
Playing into the Tories hand, the Liberals launched a series of attack ads against Charest, criticizing his age and inexperience. At one point the narrator suggested that the Prime Minister was “a child” and had “no business representing Canada at the grown-ups table”. While some voters found the ad appealing, a great many more, especially younger voters, found the attack offensive. The ad quickly received national attention, with some Liberal candidate even publically disassociating themselves with their party’s commercial. Eventually even Chretien himself was forced to apologize, claiming that despite some reports he had not cleared the ad personally. The justification further cemented the notion in some voter’s minds that the Liberal’s campaign was disorganized. While the Tories were still deeply unpopular for implementing the GST and their contributions towards the recession, some saw the attack against the Prime Minister as bitter and desperate, and gave the governing party a few extra points in the polls, enough to retake the lead from the Liberals.
On Election Night voters produced the narrowest victory since Pierre Trudeau’s two-seat win over Robert Stanfield in 1972. Although decimated out West and in parts of Atlantic Canada, the Progressive Conservatives were re-elected to a minority government, 107 seats to the Liberal’s 93, a gain of only ten since the last election. The major beneficiary of the PC’s western collapse, Reform won the popular vote from British Columbia to Manitoba, nearly sweeping the province of Alberta for a total of 52 seats and third place in parliament. Audrey McLaughlin and the NDP meanwhile faced an embarrassing defeat, losing official party status by only one seat. In Quebec, Lucien Bouchard and the Bloc found their momentum stunted, with many federalists, and a large number of nationalists, coalescing behind the Tories to block them. The Conservative coalition of Ontario and Quebec was battered, but it had held. Jean Charest had won his first election, with a second campaign only just around the corner.
Amidst the shock, jubilation, and tears, phone calls were being made at a hotel room in Montreal.
Prime Ministers of Canada:
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Liberal) 1968-1979
Joe Clark (Progressive Conservative) 1979-1980
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Liberal) 1980-1984
John Turner (Liberal) 1984
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1984-1993
Jean Charest (Progressive Conservative) 1993-
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Liberal) 1968-1979
Joe Clark (Progressive Conservative) 1979-1980
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Liberal) 1980-1984
John Turner (Liberal) 1984
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1984-1993
Jean Charest (Progressive Conservative) 1993-
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