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The Tories say goodbye.


Prime Minister Kim Campbell's attempt to rescue the Tories from the unpopularity of the Mulroney years failed abysmally in the October 25 general election. Angry voters savaged her Progressive Conservative party, from New-foundland to Vancouver. In the Atlantic province of New Brunswick New Brunswick, province, Canada
New Brunswick, province (2001 pop. 729,498), 28,345 sq mi (73,433 sq km), including 519 sq mi (1,345 sq km) of water surface, E Canada.
, only Elsie Wayne Elsie Eleanore Wayne (née Fairweather) (born April 20, 1932 in Shediac, New Brunswick) is a Canadian politician, and a former Progressive Conservative MP for Saint John. Political career
In 1977, she was elected to the Saint John municipal council.
, the popular former mayor of Saint John Saint John, city, Canada
Saint John, city (1991 pop. 74,969), S N.B., Canada, at the mouth of the St. John River on the Bay of Fundy. A major year-round port, it has an excellent harbor, large dry docks, and terminal facilities and maintains extensive
, was elected as a Tory. And in Quebec, where former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's party had won sixty seats in 1988, the Tories retained only one seat, that won by Jean Charest John James Charest, PC, MNA, known as Jean Charest IPA: [ʒɑ̃ ʃɑʀe] (born June 24, 1958) is a Canadian lawyer and politician from the province of Quebec. . This time out, the avowedly separatist Bloc Quebecois, led by former Mulroney cabinet minister Lucien Bouchard Lucien Bouchard, PC, B.Sc, LL.B (born December 22, 1938) is a Quebec lawyer, diplomat and politician. He was the Leader of Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 to 1996, and Premier of Quebec from January 29, 1996 to March 8, 2001. , took fifty-four seats, giving the Bloc the status of the official opposition.

In Ontario, the Reform party--an extreme-right, populist party Populist party, in U.S. history, political party formed primarily to express the agrarian protest of the late 19th cent. In some states the party was known as the People's party.  led by Preston Manning Ernest Preston Manning, CC (born June 10, 1942, in Edmonton, Alberta), is a right-wing populist Canadian politician. He was the first and only leader of the Reform Party of Canada, a Canadian federal political party that evolved into the Canadian Alliance.  of Alberta--divided the already weakened conservative vote to give the Liberals an unprecedented sweep in Canada's most populous province: ninety-eight out of ninety-nine seats. The remaining seat went to the Reform party, while the mildly left New Democratic party (NDP NDP New Democratic Party (Canada)
NDP National Development Plan (Republic of Ireland)
NDP National Development Plan
NDP National Democratic Party (Barbados) 
) lost all ten of its seats and the Tories lost forty-two.

In the prairie provinces Prairie Provinces, Canada: see Manitoba; Saskatchewan; Alberta. , the Liberals continued their sweep, gaining eight seats in Manitoba and five in Saskatchewan. In Alberta, however, the Liberals got only four seats. Here, the Reform party rolled up a total of twenty-two seats and added twenty-four more in British Columbia (compared to the Liberals' six). The Tories lost eleven seats in British Columbia, including Kim Campbell's, and the NDP retained only two of its previous seventeen seats. In the Yukon, NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin held her seat but the rest of the North went Liberal.

The defeat of the Tories and the NDP was so total that neither got the twelve seats needed to qualify for official party status in the House of Commons House of Commons: see Parliament. . As a result, they will not be granted research budgets, nor will they be allowed to ask questions in committees without the agreement of other members. While the NDP has been there before, this is without precedent for the Progressive Conservative party.

What does it all mean? For starters, the ersatz er·satz  
adj.
Being an imitation or a substitute, usually an inferior one; artificial: ersatz coffee made mostly of chicory. See Synonyms at artificial.
 character of the Tory campaign convinced nobody. It had been hoped that Kim Campbell, projecting an image of youth (she is forty-six) and new beginnings, could overcome the bitterness many felt toward Brian Mulroney and the Tories. Not only were the Tories blamed for the recession (not entirely a bum rap), but they have never been forgiven for the GST GST
abbr.
Greenwich sidereal time


GST (in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) Goods and Services Tax
 (Goods and Services Tax The Goods and Services Tax is a Value-added tax that exists in a number of countries. Please see:
  • Goods and Services Tax (Australia)
  • Goods and Services Tax (Canada)
  • Goods and Services Tax (Hong Kong)
  • Goods and Services Tax (New Zealand)
, a national sales tax sales tax, levy on the sale of goods or services, generally calculated as a percentage of the selling price, and sometimes called a purchase tax. It is usually collected in the form of an extra charge by the retailer, who remits the tax to the government. ). Campbell was haunted by a statement she had made while campaigning for leadership of British Columbia's Social Credit party: "Charisma without substance is dangerous." In this campaign she demonstrated that a failed attempt at charisma without substance is ludicrous. She also attempted the impossible: to turn her back on Mulroney without repudiating a single one of the policies and practices that had made him the most disliked prime minister in recent history. This was made worse by a number of gaffes during the campaign, the most serious being a statement to the effect that a campaign is no place to debate serious issues.

The Liberals hardly needed to campaign. They cautiously went through the motions. Jean Chretien, the new Liberal prime minister, is an old hand, although at fifty-nine he is hardly over the hill. The Tories tried and failed to depict him as "yesterday's man." He promised jobs, as Mulroney had in 1984, and the preservation of Canada's health-care programs. Tory advertisement rediculed Chretien's proposals for job creation even as Campbell stated that nothing could be done to lower unemployment before the end of the century. For the rest of it, the Liberals relied mainly on the popular perception of what they represent and the widespread desire of an overwhelming majority to get rid of the Tories.

Unlike the Tories, the Liberals are a party that retains belief in governance. They are not dogmatically opposed to government intervention in the economy. They are pledged to renegotiate the trade agreement with the United States (FTA FTA
abbr.
Future Teachers of America
), particularly since the proposed NAFTA NAFTA
 in full North American Free Trade Agreement

Trade pact signed by Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in 1992, which took effect in 1994. Inspired by the success of the European Community in reducing trade barriers among its members, NAFTA created the world's
 agreement gives Mexico some leverage over resources that Canada does not have in the FTA. Finally, the desire for stability of a majority government in a race that fielded five major parties was also a factor.

While the Liberals have a solid majority, 177 of 295 seats, the opposition is such as to make the next Parliament a bizarre affair. The Reform party had pledged to eliminate the deficit in three years without raising taxes. This is the measure of the unreality of their economic utopia. And while there was never any danger of their forming a government, they came within two seats of forming the official opposition. That space is now occupied by the nationalist Bloc Quebecois, whose position is somewhat enigmatic. The Bloc may be something more than a protest vote, and it rankles some English Canadians that a separatist party should form the official opposition. For Lucien Bouchard himself, the position is something of a mixed blessing. His own power is mostly symbolic, and given the realities of power, the move from the symbolic to the real will pose difficulties.

Geography and the absurdities of Canada's "winner-take-all" electoral system are much in evidence. The Tories got 17 percent of the popular vote but only two seats. The NDP, with 7 percent of the vote, got nine. And the Reform party, with 20 percent, got fifty-two seats. (By comparison, in the most recent Parliament the NDP had 20 percent of the vote but only forty-three seats.) While the Liberals are fairly thin on the ground in the West, they can, with justice, claim to be the only truly national party. The Reform party had high hopes of becoming more widespread geographically, but it has only one seat east of Manitoba. The fact that the Tories retain only two seats in all of Canada may be Mulroney's last testament to the party he took over in 1984.

Since Canada does not have a system of proportional representative, pre-election fears of an Italian-style Parliament with five strong parties have vanished. The country has the stability of a solid majority government. The Liberals' only constraints are the limits of the possible; their perceptions about what can be accomplished through government are somewhat more optimistic than either their predecessors' or the opposition in the new Parliament. There was, on October 25, a near-consensus to the effect that the country is a mess. In Canada, the transition to a new government takes about ten days and is accomplished rather quietly. As for what it really means, we shall know more in a year's time.
COPYRIGHT 1993 Commonweal Foundation
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1993, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Title Annotation:1993 Canada election results
Author:Bishop, Jordan
Publication:Commonweal
Date:Nov 19, 1993
Words:1104
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