This is Part Eleven of a multiseries. Read Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten.
The 1993 Canadian Election returned Canada to the hands of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Jean Chrétien and his party won 177 seats and the highest percentage of the popular vote. However, the majority of British Columbia sent a Reform Party of Canada to Parliament, including the North Island - Powell River (John Duncan) and Comox - Alberni (Bill Gilmour) ridings.
The Reform Party was founded in 1987 by Preston Manning, Stan Roberts and Robert Muir at a convention in Winnipeg. Manning became the party's leader. The party was rooted in right-wing populism and conservatism and was a response to Western alienation from the Progressive Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney's leadership.
By 1993, the party had become the biggest conservative party in the country, despite being shut out of Atlantic Canada and Quebec. They did win one seat in Ontario, Simcoe Centre, and also struggled in Manitoba. The party won 52 seats, only two fewer than the newly formed Bloc Québécois.
Chrétien promised he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the Liberals were in favour of, but thought Mulroney negotiated terms more favourable to the United States and Mexico than it was to Canada. Chrétien said they would renegotiate the terms within six months of taking office or would renounce the agreement if he failed. Promises regarding Canada's debt and reducing the deficit to GDP ratio were also involved. The target of reducing the GDP ratio by three per cent was reached after three years of Chrétien being in office.
In 1995, Quebec had another independence referendum. The referendum came off the back of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the rejection of the Charlottetown Accord. When it came to vote on June 12, 1995, 93.52 per cent of the registered voters turned out to vote in the referendum. It is the highest turnout in any federal or provincial election in the country's history.
It was a tight vote, with 50.58 per cent voting "No." One of the supporters for the independence side, André Dallaire, was upset with the result. He broke into Chrétien's residence in Ottawa. Dallaire attempted to kill the Prime Minister but was discovered in the residence by Aline, Chrétien's wife, who secured the bedroom door. Dallaire was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 16.
According to Dominque Bourget, a psychiatrist who served as a witness during Dallaire's trail, said Dallarie believed he was a secret agent avenging the loss of sovereignist forces during the referendum. Dallaire was found guilty of attempted murder, breaking and entering, possession of a weapon and being unlawfully in a dwelling, but was deemed not responsible because of mental incompetence.
Following the results, the Prime Minister also started a new policy he called "Plan B." He had Parliament pass a resolution recognizing Quebec as a "distinct society," but it had no standing constitutionally, and took measures to make it harder for Quebec to legally separate from Canada, such as partitioning Quebec in the event of another referendum.
Chrétien called for an early election in 1997 with polls projecting another Liberal landslide. The call for the election was not popular with his own party, as it was early and Manitoba was still recovering from the Red River Flood, which resulted in $3.5 billion in property damage.
The Liberals still won a majority government, but did worse than expected. Projected to win more than 180 seats, they instead only won 155. The Reform Party won 60 seats, while the Bloc won 44. The New Democratic Party won 21, and the Progressive Conservatives won 20, recovering from their disastrous previous election.
Gilmour was re-elected, but in the Nanaimo-Alberni riding, which was re-established in 1997. Duncan was also re-elected, but in the newly created Vancouver Island North riding. Duncan narrowly beat the NDP's Catherine J. Bell. Duncan won with 18,733 votes, while Bell had 18,250. Noor Ahmed, a Liberal, came in third. Pam Munroe of the Green Party received 4,456 votes, while Jack East of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) received a meagre 111 votes.
In 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War from March 24 to June 10. Chrétien was in support of the bombing campaign, mostly to keep good relations with the United States, despite the campaign not being sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. According to Lawrence Martin's Iron Man, a biography on Chrétien, the Prime Minister said it was better to intervene than to do nothing, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians by the Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, and paramilitaries.
In the spring of 200, the Reform Party rebranded as the Canadian Alliance, after the Progressive Conservatives (back under the leadership of Joe Clark) rejected a merger. During the party's first leadership convention, Manning was defeated by Stockwell Day, who led the party into a more nationalized party opposed to a more Western-based party focused on Western ideology and issues.
Meanwhile, the federal government called another election early.
The Liberals won a third majority, winning 172 seats. Stockwall Day and the Alliance improved their seats by eight, winning 66 seats. The Bloc won 38, while the NDP won 13. The Progressive Conservatives won 12.
In 2001, Day, after numerous gaffes and controversies surrounding his beliefs, agreed to step aside as leader of the Alliance and re-contest the leadership. He was defeated by future Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The election would be the first and last election the party contested, eventually merging with the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative Party of Canada in December 2003.
Chrétien followed the United States into Afghanistan after al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks. However, he refused to support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. As damage control with the United States, he approved to send a larger deployment of Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan.
Chrétien and the Liberal Party had been infighting since his first election. The fighting was between Chrétien and Paul Martin, who wanted to be the party's leader but were largely contained behind the scenes. According to Jeffrey Brooke's Divided Loyalties, it came to a head in 2002, when Martin's supporters had control over issuing party membership forms, making it hard for anyone to sign up if they were not a Martin supporter.
Carolyn Bennett, a Liberal MP, was critical of Chrétien's history of not appointing more women to the Cabinet during a caucus meeting, gaining his ire and causing her to cry. Eventually, Martin left the cabinet on June 2, 2002, after a cabinet meeting. Martin claimed he was dismissed, while Chrétien claimed he resigned.
Martin supporters became openly critical of the Prime Minister. Eventually, Chrétien had no other option but to announce he would need to lead the party into the next election and would retire in early 2004. However, he formally resigned as Prime Minister on Dec. 12, 2003, with Martin taking over.
