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.

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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.

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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-
 
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Ooh. How interesting, though I wonder how on earth a minority this small in a period of such economic sorrow can survive.

Hoping Charest and Manning form a coalition government

Nope. Not gonna happen. Reform explicitly separated from the PCs because they felt that they were too moderate. Making a coalition would be a betrayal of its values.
 
Ooh. How interesting, though I wonder how on earth a minority this small in a period of such economic sorrow can survive.



Nope. Not gonna happen. Reform explicitly separated from the PCs because they felt that they were too moderate. Making a coalition would be a betrayal of its values.

Yeah, that was one of the biggest blunders of my original TL back in 2012. It was just so unbelievable.
 
Update #2: Liberal Party of Canada leadership election, 1994
As the election had concluded with such a narrow result, Jean Chretien initially informed reporters that he would stay on as Liberal leader, arguing that a minority parliament meant having a leadership election “wouldn’t make much sense”. Unfortunately for Chretien, his caucus did not share his appraisal of the situation.

Following a meeting with his ninety-two colleagues on December 5, the Liberal leader announced to reporters that he would be stepping down as leader effective immediately, with Winnipeg MP Lloyd Axworthy replacing him on an interim basis until a permanent leader was chosen at a later date. It turned out that date would be April 14, 1994. The declared candidates included 1990 runner-up Paul Martin, Newfoundland MP Brian Tobin, former cabinet minister Bob Kaplan, Ontario MP Sheila Copps, and anti-abortion MP Tom Wappel.

While some party insiders and left-wing members attempted to persuade Axworthy to enter the race as their best chance to stop Martin, disparagingly called by some as “John Turner’s heir”, especially after having distinguished himself during Question Period, the Manitoba MP declined. Thus from the outset it was clear that Paul Martin was the overwhelming frontrunner to replace Chretien as leader. Some MPs had even urged candidates like Tobin not to run, suggesting the quicker the party chose a leader the quicker they could bring down the Tories and replace them. Unfortunately for them, Tobin had pinned his hopes on being the Liberal’s Jean Charest and pull off an upset against the established favourite. Despite being Martin’s junior, Tobin, having been first elected to parliament in 1980, had more legislative experience than Martin, who was first elected in 1988.

As the race continued, it became clear that there was no love lost between either Tobin or Martin, with some observers comparing it to Martin’s relationship with Chretien, who Tobin had supported in 1990. Much like the previous convention, physical fights broke out against the members supporting the two leading candidates. While such actions made for good television, it made clear to the public that there were still divisions within the Liberal Party.

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Despite the media’s attempts to make the convention compelling to Canadians, the outcome of the vote was never in doubt. Paul Martin received an overwhelming victory over Tobin, even larger than Chretien’s victory over him four years earlier. Paul Martin had accomplished what his father could not, and was now leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. By the time Martin took his seat as Leader of the Official Opposition, it was clear that another election campaign was imminent.
 
Update #3: Canadian federal election, 1994
Eight months proved to be an awful long time in Canadian Politics. Despite their unpopularity, the governing Progressive Conservatives had managed to win re-election, albeit to a narrow minority government. Unfortunately for the Tories and Jean Charest, governing was far more difficult than campaigning, especially with a rising deficit and seemingly out of control spending. In the government’s February budget, Finance Minister Perrin Beatty implemented only minor cuts, with unemployment insurance and provincial transfer payments largely untouched. Many observers argued that too deep of cuts would place the government’s re-election chances in jeopardy. The Liberals meanwhile had managed to learn the lessons from their election defeat and revamped the party leadership with Martin loyalists. Party president Don Johnson was replaced with Dan Hays, Eddie Goldenberg was exchanged for David Herle, and more importantly Jean Chretien was succeeded by Paul Martin. Within weeks of Martin’s election to the leadership the Liberals vaulted ahead of the government in opinion polls, often time placing six to seven points ahead of the Tory government. Even worse for the Tories was that “Charestmania” had begun to lose its lustre with voters, and within the first week of Martin’s election the Progressive Conservative leader found himself essentially tied or trailing with his Liberal counterpart over who voters preferred as Prime Minister. This was not to say that everything in Martinland was going perfectly. Despite winning roughly sixty percent of delegates’ support, the Liberal Party caucus still suffered from division. Chretien loyalists like Brian Tobin, Marc Harb, Peter Millikan and Sheila Finestone were still very much present within the party, many of whom still viewed Martin with distrust. Chretien himself was still a sitting Member of Parliament, and had privately indicated that he would not step down before the next election, as many Martin backers had pressured him to do, and in fact seemed prepared to continue on as the MP for Saint-Maurice for the foreseeable future.

For the NDP the aftermath of the election had left the party in turmoil. Losing official party status had taken its blow on the party’s fundraising, which seemed poised to remain in last place in the House of Commons for the remainder of its existence. Even worse, the unpredictability of the minority parliament meant that Audrey McLaughlin, who had offered to resign following the NDP’s embarrassing results, would remain on as party leader until at least the next election, and for many members not a moment after. Preston Manning and the Reform Party were wildly regarded as the biggest winners of the election. Having secured more than fifty seats, combined with the continued unpopularity of the Tories, it appeared that Reform had permanently supplemented the conservatives as the West’s voice in Ottawa. Unfortunately for Manning, many of Reform’s new MPs were undisciplined, and the party possessed virtually zero strategy during Question Period. While Reform’s push for deeper cuts helped its fiscally conservative image throughout the prairies, many voters east of Manitoba, with some exceptions in Ontario, were worried with the increasingly right-wing party’s rhetoric, with some comparing it to the Republican Party down south. Aside from the Liberals, only the Bloc Quebecois, comprised mainly of former Conservative and Liberal MPs, seemed prepared to mount a meaningful opposition to the government, with Lucien Bouchard routinely called upon to make appearances on both French and English Canadian media. Continuing its slow decline, it seemed as though the Tory coalition between voters in Ontario and Quebec was on its last legs. Voters had seen Jean Charest in action, and many were not terribly impressed with what they saw.

The only bright side for the Tories was that Paul Martin, while popular in the rest of Canada, was still viewed with some mistrust by Quebec voters. Thanks in part to the narrow 158-137 passage of his non-binding motion in the House of Commons to recognize the Quebecois as a distinct society which forms a nation within a united Canada, Charest’s personal approvals in Quebec were on the rise. Although an MP from the province, as his father before him, Paul Martin was actually born in Ontario, and seemed more comfortable with that provinces’ francophone community than with those whose votes he wished to take back from the Conservatives. Despite this fact, Paul Martin’s election as leader undeniably made the Liberals more competitive in the province, reflected in the recruitment of several high profile star candidates for the upcoming election. There was also the fact that while Paul Martin’s leadership victory brought his financial bona-fides to the Liberal Party, Charest was still wildly regarded as the better, more charismatic politician, and proved to be a fundraising machine for the party, facts that had served him well against Jean Chretien.

This fact was put on display during their brief, pre-campaign battle during Question Period. The Liberal leader found himself accused of coming off as stilted and at times condescending while question the Prime Minister, who in turn was often complimented for his calm, if non-specific performance. Despite Martin’s relatively mild performance, the question was not whether or not he would pull the plug on the government in 1994, but when in 1994. In a surprise turn of events, it proved to be the Tories, and not the Liberals, who would answer that question. On June 13, exactly one year since his election as Progressive Conservative leader and Prime Minister, Jean Charest asked Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn to dissolve parliament and call an election. Speaking to reporters at Rideau Hall, the Prime Minister argued that the decision facing voters was between a continued Progressive Conservative government that would gradually reduce the financial pain felt by Canadians, and a Liberal Party who was prepared to tear up free trade, cut healthcare, unemployment insurance, transfer payments, and defence spending. In essence the Tories labelled the Liberals as “Reform-lite”. Although the official Liberal position was to deny the amount of cuts that they would implement if they formed government, the charge actually benefited some of their candidates out West.

Within the first week of the campaign the Liberals released their campaign platform, entitled Canada’s Future: The Liberal Plan for Canada, which the media quickly dubbed Red Book 2.0. During the previous campaign more attention was paid to fundraising, while platform commitments were released gradually, with promises released during certain weeks to maximize media attention. Chretien’s feud with Paul Martin, egged on by Chretien’s chief of staff Eddie Goldenberg, meant that some of the key policy ideas put forth by Martin were excluded from the final product. While the policies that ended up in Red Book 1.0 were praised for being specific, version two laid out exactly the cost of each promise and incorporated all the Martin policies that had been excluded during the previous campaign. Under a Liberal government the Goods and Services Tax would be repealed, a national childcare program would be introduced, legislate more gun control, reform unemployment insurance, and most notably return Canada to surplus. In the hopes of connecting more personally with voters, the Liberal leader styled the new party platform as a “contract with the public”, a new means to gain the trust of Canadians and a further way to draw contrast with the Tories.

Most political pundits meanwhile agreed that the best comparison to the Tory campaign strategy was that of carpet bombing. Jean Charest criss-crossed the country, albeit with greater emphasis on central and eastern Canada, repeating his charge that Paul Martin and the Liberals would say one thing to get elected and do another in power. Television ads, radio ads, and newspaper ads were taken out across the country, promoting the Tory leader’s steady hand in an unsteady world. While the Progressive Conservative campaign platform was criticized for being too similar to the previous campaigns proposals, Charest ratcheted up his pledges to reduce the size of the federal government, promising to reduce the size of the civil service and eliminate entire government departments. Critics argued that the Prime Minister was trying to implement the most right-wing platform in modern times while criticizing his opponents for making almost the exact same promises. The main difference according to the Tory leader was that under a Progressive Conservative government, the policy of avoiding cuts to employment insurance, transfer payments and healthcare would be avoided. In fact, spending on healthcare would be increased.

Despite the rigorous Tory campaign, polls continued to show the Liberals with a significant lead. With a credible leader at the helm, it seemed the Martin would achieve the assured victory that was originally meant for his predecessor months earlier. The Liberals stayed on message, offered realistic promises, and seemed the best prepared to tackle Canada’s growing financial mess. By the election’s mid-point, polls suggested that the Liberals would form a majority government of almost 190 seats, the largest majority since Brian Mulroney’s a decade earlier. Voters in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, and even in Saskatchewan seemed prepared to give the Liberals their backing, enough so that pundits began to question whether or not Jean Charest would even be opposition leader once Election Day was over.

Preston Manning was not under any illusion that he would form government in 1994. There simply wasn’t enough support east of Manitoba to propel him to 24 Sussex. Thus Reform’s strategy was to replace the Tories and the government-in-waiting and make Manning the next leader of the official opposition. With bedrock support in Alberta and large pockets of backers across the West, it appeared an inevitability that Reform would outplace the Tories, even if the latter managed to win more votes across the country. To many Reformers, then it would only be a matter of time before the Conservatives folded and Reform became the clear-cut alternative to Paul Martin. Everywhere Manning campaigned, he slammed the Prime Minister as a sell-out, mocking his promises to cut wasteful spending in Ottawa. After all, argued the Reform Party leader, wasn’t it the Tories who were responsible for the mess in Ottawa? Most westerners tended to agree. Lucien Bouchard meanwhile continued his mission of promoting Quebec’s interests and sovereignty. As one of the two most trusted politicians in the province, Jean Charest often being the other, Bouchard carried great respect and influence in Quebec. While the Tories had managed to consolidate enough federalist votes to win more seats than the Bloc, the second they were re-elected they implemented the distinct society motion that appealed to a large number of soft-nationalists, voters whom the Bloc needed. Provincially polls showed that the Parti Quebecois, under Jacques Parizeau, and Premier Daniel Johnson were deadlocked. Parizeau promised that should his party win power a second sovereignty referendum would be around the corner. Bouchard hoped to tap into the anger directed towards the provincial Liberals by tying Charest and Johnson together. The Tory leader accepted the charge, proclaiming his party as defenders of federalism. Paul Martin meanwhile played it safe, rejecting the necessity of a second referendum while proclaiming that Quebec required more than “non-binding motions”.

In the aftermath of the two leader’s debates, which were mostly regarded as valueless towards the election’s final results, it seemed that all that was left was waiting a few more weeks. A Liberal supermajority with a Reform opposition had moved from being highly likely to a foregone conclusion. Even Quebecers seemed willing to give Paul Martin a chance.

Then the July 31st rally happened.

Desperate to inject some last minute life into his campaign, Charest made the gamble of holding a mass rally in Montreal to speak of his vision of Canada and Quebec. Tories from across the province and in some cases the country were bused in for what insiders dubbed the “comeback pitch”. The Prime Minister admitted that his party had made mistakes and in some cases failed Canadians. Yet in his speech, Charest made his plea that Canada’s future was still bright, a future that was under threat not from Paul Martin and the Liberals but Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard. In one memorable moment of the speech Charest took out his Canadian passport and told the mainly-Quebecer audience that he would not let either the Bloc or the Parti Quebecois take that away from them. Although Charest’s critics accused the Prime Minister of trying out for Daniel Johnson’s job, others applauded the frank and impassioned speech to voters.

Though the rally proved to be insufficient to earn the Tories another mandate to govern, it had secured their position as the second largest party in the House of Commons. Unsurprisingly Paul Martin won the Liberals their first majority government since 1980, albeit much narrower than many had expected. At only four seats, the Liberals would be forced to remain on their toes in Parliament at all times. For all early predictions of Reform coming second place, the western based protest party actually managed to lose seats – to the Liberals. Moderate voters in Manitoba and Saskatchewan who had stuck with the Tories in 1993 rallied to the Liberals rather than vote for Manning. Paul Martin was now Prime Minister and the Liberal Red Book seemed ready to become law. The Tories were now at a crossroads; stick with the leader that had managed to pull off an unimaginable comeback not once but twice, or begin the backroom negotiations to bring the conservative movement together. But that meant beginning peace talks with the same westerners that had viciously attacked them since 1988.

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(Credit to @LeinadB93 for the map)

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) 1993-1994
Paul Martin (Liberal) 1994-
The next update should be the Charest cabinet of 1993-1994.
 
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Good update, but I noticed a small mistake. The box has 1994 be the previous election, when it should be 1993.
 
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