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The 1974 Canadian Election would be held up in the future as a prime example of a party losing an election through sheer arrogance. Incumbent Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had willingly let his minority government collapse in the hopes of winning a majority. And there was indeed a majority government elected on election night, but it would be headed by Robert Stanfield's Progressive Conservatives not, Pierre Trudeau's Liberal. How did Trudeau go from willingly letting his Government collapse to losing power in a matter of a few weeks? That can be answered in many ways, but to put it simply, The PC's ran a far better campaign then the Liberals did, in that they loudly addressed the big issue of the day: Inflation. The PC's ran on implementing a "90-day wage and price freeze" in order to check inflation. While the Liberals mocked this at first, Stanfield shot back by pointing out the Liberals had no specific proposal to halt inflation in their platform. Along with this, Stanfield, while more then a little dull, seemed more down to earth then the Intellectual Trudeau, who the PC's portrayed as out of touch and arrogant, and unconcerned with the issues faced by ordinary Canadians, which was no doubt helped by the Liberals failing to address inflation in their platform. The Liberals meanwhile, were assured of a victory, and ran a passive campaign. These factors, when combined, resulted in Robert Stanfield being able to form the first PC Majority since John Diefenbaker 2 decades prior.
Perhaps the most shocking result of the night came in Ottawa-Carleton, where Finance Minister John Turner was unseated by the Progressive Conservative candidate Bill Neville. Turner's defeat would go on to symbolize the loss suffered by the Liberals that year, and would be given the moniker "Turner Loss".