DBWI: If Kim Campbell was elected Prime Minister in

I'm an American, but I do have an interest in Canadian politics. While visiting the Canadian Parliament website, I noticed that former minister of justice and Kim Campbell was a candidate for the PC leadership in 1993, although she ultimately lost to the young yet uninspiring Jean Charest.

As you remember, Jean Charest lead his party to historic defeat, only maintaining 35 seats. Could Campbell, who would have been the first woman Prime Minister of Canada, made any difference?
 
I'm a Canadian politics buff and I had to Wiki her.......wasn't she a key opponent of the Tar Sands expansion project?
 
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I'm a Canadian politics buff and I had to Wiki her.......wasn't she a key opponent of the Tar Sands expansion project?

I believe she was, but I'm not sure.

Anyway,I think had Campbell won the leadership, she might have had enough of a "historical" gravitas (for lack of a better word) to prevent a total loss for the PC's in the event of an election, or at least a better result than Charest.

I also wonder if the the rise of the Reform Party could be butterflied away? After all, Reform and Preston Manning were able to consolidate power in the West due to the election of another Quebecer in 1993. Reform might have remained a purely Western party had not Manning formed a minority government in 1999 after edging out the Liberals, and winning some support from the PC's.
 
I believe she was, but I'm not sure.

Anyway,I think had Campbell won the leadership, she might have had enough of a "historical" gravitas (for lack of a better word) to prevent a total loss for the PC's in the event of an election, or at least a better result than Charest.

I also wonder if the the rise of the Reform Party could be butterflied away? After all, Reform and Preston Manning were able to consolidate power in the West due to the election of another Quebecer in 1993. Reform might have remained a purely Western party had not Manning formed a minority government in 1999 after edging out the Liberals, and winning some support from the PC's.

Reform was a total and utter disaster for Canada. You do realize that Manning is now possibly the most disliked PM in the country's whole history, right? Even many Albertans don't like him anymore. I'm just glad that the NDP won the January '04 elections; it was already bad enough that we here in the States ended up giving G.W. Bush two terms as it is(Barack Obama has really been turning things around, though, like Jack Layton did for Canada.).
 
Reform was a total and utter disaster for Canada. You do realize that Manning is now possibly the most disliked PM in the country's whole history, right? Even many Albertans don't like him anymore. I'm just glad that the NDP won the January '04 elections; it was already bad enough that we here in the States ended up giving G.W. Bush two terms as it is(Barack Obama has really been turning things around, though, like Jack Layton did for Canada.).

The NDP was the unmigitated disaster. And to think that they managed to get reelected in '08. Fortunately that was a minority and we got rid of them for good the following year. (They're back down to their historical level of ~20-25 seats in parliament. Hopefully they stay there until hell freezes over.) And if Manning is so disliked, why is it that one of his proteges, Danielle Smith, Prime Minister of Canada? Her Conservative Alliance government holds a majority in parliament.
 
I remember that, a lot of people on the board don't really like her due to he reversing Layton's reforms but her party is still heading for re-election from what I've seen, is that true on your end? Anyway, Manning seems to do average in terms of the liking polls, it's only the massive NDP hate for him that pushes him down and the massive lovefest he gets from the right. Anyway, maybe I'm biased because of how she gets along with Howard.
 
The NDP was the unmigitated disaster. And to think that they managed to get reelected in '08. Fortunately that was a minority and we got rid of them for good the following year. (They're back down to their historical level of ~20-25 seats in parliament. Hopefully they stay there until hell freezes over.) And if Manning is so disliked, why is it that one of his proteges, Danielle Smith, Prime Minister of Canada? Her Conservative Alliance government holds a majority in parliament.

Smith had to keep her connections with Manning strictly under wraps when she was running for office for the July '09 elections and would have been badly trounced had her association with that scumbag Manning been revealed far earlier, instead of August 2010 as per OTL, when the second Keystone pipeline scandal came to light.

@Blackadder: Actually, she got voted out in October 2010. By a very large margin, I might add. She may be popular amongst Canada's small but dedicated hard-right core and does have a Reaganesque charm about her, but the election's only a week away and all the exit polls have the NDP/Liberal coalition winning by a very large margin; it looks like Justin Trudeau's about to win another term in office, and the Cons are about to lose their Alliance majority in Parliament as well. So I guess Smith can kiss her comeback goodbye(As much as The Sun would like us to believe otherwise.). :D Which is good, because Canada doesn't need anymore crooks like Manning or sweet-talking con artists like Smith in Office.
 
Smith had to keep her connections with Manning strictly under wraps when she was running for office for the July '09 elections and would have been badly trounced had her association with that scumbag Manning been revealed far earlier, instead of August 2010 as per OTL, when the second Keystone pipeline scandal came to light.

@Blackadder: Actually, she got voted out in October 2010. By a very large margin, I might add. She may be popular amongst Canada's small but dedicated hard-right core and does have a Reaganesque charm about her, but the election's only a week away and all the exit polls have the NDP/Liberal coalition winning by a very large margin; it looks like Justin Trudeau's about to win another term in office, and the Cons are about to lose their majority in Parliament as well. So I guess Smith can kiss her comeback goodbye. :D

Umm, I'm checking Wikipedia and other sites and they say she's still Prime Minister, are you sure you just haven't been reading too much into a TL?

(OOC: It is considered poor taste just to retcon someone's addition, just because you don't like the ideological turn it takes)
 
Umm, I'm checking Wikipedia and other sites and they say she's still Prime Minister, are you sure you just haven't been reading too much into a TL?

(OOC: It is considered poor taste just to retcon someone's addition, just because you don't like the ideological turn it takes)

I was going to ask you the exact same question. Somebody vandalized that article recently, btw. All the other sites I've checked so far say Justin Trudeau.....but given how much the far-right hates the guy, I'm not surprised. A few of their American counterparts did the same thing with Obama, btw, by erasing his name and writing in Mitt Romney as President(In fact, it happened again last week).

OOC: No offense meant, but I just don't like it when people purposefully derail threads like RCAF seems to have done. That's all. And I didn't even do a full retcon. I mean, just look at what he wrote: Why would Canada elect a protege of a Prime Minister who ended up being highly disliked unless that person had to cover up that association? Sorry, but that's what it looks like.....all I did was just make a few adjustments to make everything fit the canon that's already been established. (And I've had this problem before, too, just not with the same user, though.)
 
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I was going to ask you the exact same question. Somebody vandalized that article recently, btw. All the other sites I've checked so far say Justin Trudeau.....but given how much the far-right hates the guy, I'm not surprised. A few of their American counterparts did the same thing with Obama, btw, by erasing his name and writing in Mitt Romney as President(In fact, it happened again last week).

OOC: No offense meant, but I just don't like it when people purposefully derail threads like RCAF seems to have done. That's all.

Nope, CBC says Prime Minister Smith.

(OOC: You covered things upto 2004, I simply added a direction to 2012, you could have made a post about declining popularity into just forcing your own continuity into things.)
 
Nope, CBC says Prime Minister Smith.

(OOC: You covered things upto 2004, I simply added a direction to 2012, you could have made a post about declining popularity into just forcing your own continuity into things.)

OOC: That was RCAF's doing, not mine(I don't see why you're claiming credit, either, because it wasn't your idea, but his. Honestly, that makes no sense. :confused:). Let's try to get back on topic, alright?

IC: Uh...that article you sent me was from 2010, and it only mentions former PM Smith. On a related note, the CBC does say that Smith's chances for winning the vote in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland are fairly decent but she's being trounced everywhere else, including in Alberta.
 
I remember that, a lot of people on the board don't really like her due to he reversing Layton's reforms but her party is still heading for re-election from what I've seen, is that true on your end? Anyway, Manning seems to do average in terms of the liking polls, it's only the massive NDP hate for him that pushes him down and the massive lovefest he gets from the right. Anyway, maybe I'm biased because of how she gets along with Howard.

Yes they are. They'll probably get another majority, in spite of a weak economy (like everywhere else ours went into the shitter in '07 and hasn't really recovered) and the fact that a large minority of the electorate despises them. This has about as much to do with the opposition being fractured as it does with the Alliance's successes.

Manning's record looks a lot better with the benefit of hindsight than it did while he was PM. After all, while he was in power times were good, unemployment was low (<10%), and we didn't have soldiers dying in places that nobody could name. OTOH guess who got us sucked into Afghanistan*, Lebanon and the Sudan? While refusing to adequately fund the military? And on whose watch was it that the economy tanked in 2007?

*Probably inevitable following the Labour Day attack on the WTC in 2004. Once they got there, the Army would have had an easier go of it and would have taken fewer casualties had they been let off of the leash. 'Peacekeeping' is impossible when there is no peace to keep. Afghanistan was a war and the Army should have been allowed to fight it.

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Now, as to the OP, 1993 was the year that all of Mulroney's chickens came home to roost. Campbell probably wouldn't have done any worse, as the Tories were going down. OTOH I doubt that she would have done any better. Being someone not from Quebec would have helped her in the West and the Maritimes, but would have been offset by extra losses to the BQ in Quebec. The Tories still wind up with 30-40 seats while Reform gets 45-50 instead of 55 and the BQ gets 40-45 instead of 35. The NDP still gets smashed, they were lucky to survive 1993 at all. (I'd say that in an ATL of the '93 election, an electoral wipeout for the NDP is a very real possibility, and not just an ideological fantasy. The NDP not recovering in '97 and/or '99 however is the ideological fantasy, as is their getting anything above about 35 seats before 2004.) They'd probably still be anywhere between 5-10, with the OTL 7 being most likely.

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OOC: I hate being ninja'd. In my first post, I moved things to 2009-12, implied that politics in Canada aren't black and white like some people think that they are, and implied (and here I've outright stated) that the economic crash of the late 2000's was probably inevitable as early as the mid '90s due to events that occurred outside of Canada. And guess who gets blamed when things go terribly wrong with the economy? Oh, yeah, the economic boom of the late '90s/early 00s still happens, so that's remembered as the 'good times' and now someone doesn't look so bad anymore, eh?
 
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OOC: I'm beginning to regret that I started this thread.:rolleyes:

Campbell, a Westerner and a Woman, might have, at least, eased the loss that the PC's experienced, maybe even retaining some seats in BC and blunting a total loss to Reform.
 
OOC: I'm beginning to regret that I started this thread.:rolleyes:

Campbell, a Westerner and a Woman, might have, at least, eased the loss that the PC's experienced, maybe even retaining some seats in BC and blunting a total loss to Reform.

OOC: Don't worry about it. Luckily, disagreements didn't get too bad, so I'm not worried. :)

IC: Yeah. Mrs. Campbell was actually a pretty decent justice overall, so I think she might have made an okay PM, too. :D
 
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