WI: Canadian Liberals win a Landslide in 1997

So apparently, at the beginning of the 1997 Canadian Election campaign, the Liberals were expected to win in a landslide, with 59.8% to 73.0% of seats. As it turned out, not only did they not win in a landslide, they actually lost seats and very nearly lost their majority. My question is, what would have happened if they did win in that landslide? Would the creation of the Tory party be sped up? Would Martin's leadership ambitions be checked, causing Chretien to serve longer then he did? And, since I assume Manning would resign after a loss like that, who replaces him as Leader?
 
They are not a Party I follow - their only electoral success seem to be at By-Elections. Their MPs would be anything between single figures and twenty, stuck as they are between Labour and Conservative.
 
So apparently, at the beginning of the 1997 Canadian Election campaign, the Liberals were expected to win in a landslide, with 59.8% to 73.0% of seats. As it turned out, not only did they not win in a landslide, they actually lost seats and very nearly lost their majority. My question is, what would have happened if they did win in that landslide? Would the creation of the Tory party be sped up? Would Martin's leadership ambitions be checked, causing Chretien to serve longer then he did? And, since I assume Manning would resign after a loss like that, who replaces him as Leader?
A good POD to get this would be removing Charest from national politics (either by having him lose his seat in 1993 or being assassinated in 1995 by the person who tried to kill Chrétien). That would put Elsie Wayne in charge of the Tories, whose conservative social positions and lack of youth/charisma would weaken the PCs severally. At this time, more PC voters had the Grits as their second over Reform (lord caedus did a wikibox based on the second choice votes with a united conservative party in 2000 that resulted in fewer seats for the right). People like Scott Brison would likely join the Liberals earlier.

Having Michel Gauthier stay as Bloc leader would help in Québec, given that he lacked the charisma and profile of Duceppe. If Duceppe is leader like IOTL, the Bloc remaining in opposition is very bad news for the Reform Party.

For Reform, infighting between the Harper/Brown factions and the Manning faction could bring negative press to the party. If Manning didn’t do things like get laser eye surgery or try and limit his Albertan accident to improve his image as a national leader, he would seem even less like a Prime Minister.

With the Dippers, putting the Western Svend Robinson or Lorne Nystrom in the leadership position could put a greater split in the Western populist vote with Reform.

After the election, Chrétien would have much more control over the party and government. He’d probably be able to stay on as PM until the late 2000s, by which time he would have a successor from his wing (Copps, Rock, Tobin). The pre-sponsorship scandal sovereignty decline would take place at a faster rate; which is good news for Mario Dumont. As for the conservatives, the possibility that a Brian Pallister/Jim Prentice/Stephen Harper “Unite The Right” candidate wins is just as possible as a Joe Clark or David Orchard anti-merger leader. Orchard himself would completely change the party assuming that he could take over the party’s remains with his supporters.

Regardless, there’s going to be a much weaker small-c conservative base even if there is a merger.
 
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Dom

Moderator
They are not a Party I follow - their only electoral success seem to be at By-Elections. Their MPs would be anything between single figures and twenty, stuck as they are between Labour and Conservative.

You're probably thinking of the Liberal Democrats, who now have 12 seats but were previously part of Government with 57.
 
It blows me out of the water how far a major political party could fall.
Mulroney had created a coalition of Ontario moderates, Western religious populists, and Québec nationalists. By managing to alienate all of those people in his term (his approval rating was down to 12% at one point), the Tories lost support in all of those areas (which were gained by the Liberals, Reform, and the Bloc).
 
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