1997 Canadian General Election
The 36th Canadian General Election (English. 36th Canadian General Election , French. 36e élection fédérale canadienne ) took place on 2 June 1997. 301 members of the Canadian House of Commons (English: House of Commons , French: Chambre des Communes ) were elected. The upheaval in the political landscape four years earlier was largely confirmed. The Liberal Party of Jean Chrétien maintained despite slight losses the absolute majority, while the Reform Party the Bloc Québécois replaced as the strongest opposition force. The Progressive-Conservative Party was able to grow, but it did not achieve its former importance by a long way.
The vote
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien asked Governor General Roméo LeBlanc to dissolve Parliament on April 26, 1997, almost a year and a half before the latest possible date. He wanted to benefit from the good scores in opinion polls that predicted a landslide-like victory. Added to this was the fact that none of the opposition parties appeared to be in a position to pose a threat to the liberals. During the election campaign, the Liberals promised to use half of the expected budget surpluses for debt reduction and tax cuts, while the other half should be used for expanding health services and creating jobs. Despite some faux pas that happened to Chrétien during the election campaign, the Liberals emerged victorious again. Although they lost 22 seats, they just kept an absolute majority. They benefited from the fact that the opposition remained fragmented. Almost two-thirds of all Liberal MPs were from Ontario .
The Reform Party , led by Preston Manning , strove to maintain national unity by delegating various federal tasks to the provinces. She also campaigned for tax cuts and spending cuts and against a special status for Québec . With this program she wanted to achieve a breakthrough, especially in Ontario . During the election campaign, she was repeatedly confronted with allegations from other parties and the media that several of her MPs had intolerant intentions. Although the Reform Party gained eight seats and became the largest opposition party, its electoral base was limited to western Canada . It was nowhere to be found east of Manitoba and the desired seat gains in rural Ontario did not materialize.
The Bloc Québécois under the new party chairman Gilles Duceppe lost its status as the strongest opposition party. In Québec (the only province in which he ran) he lost almost a quarter of his electorate and still won 44 of 75 seats. The New Democratic Party (NDP) under Alexa McDonough gained twelve seats and regained the parliamentary group strength that it had lost in 1993. In particular, the NDP was able to gain ground in the Atlantic provinces - in a region where it had only had three MPs in its entire party history.
The progressive-conservative party , which had almost completely disappeared from the political map in 1993, was able to recover somewhat under the chairmanship of Jean Charest (one of the two remaining MPs at the time) and regained parliamentary strength. Her election manifesto was aimed at restoring national unity and recognizing the French Canadians as a society different from the English-speaking majority. The party's results in its former western Canadian strongholds remained modest in view of the overwhelming competition from the reform party. Only in the Atlantic provinces was it able to re-establish itself as a notable political force.
The turnout was 67.0%.
Overall result
| Political party | Chairman | candidates data |
Seats 1993 |
upon dissolution |
Seats 1997 |
+/- | be right | Share of voters |
+/- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Party | Jean Chrétien | 301 | 177 | 174 | 155 | - 22 | 4,994,277 | 38.46% | - 2.78% | |
| Reform party | Preston Manning | 227 | 52 | 50 | 60 | + 8 | 2,513,080 | 19.35% | + 0.66% | |
| Bloc Québécois | Gilles Duceppe | 75 | 54 | 50 | 44 | - 10 | 1,385,821 | 10.67% | - 2.85% | |
| New Democratic Party | Alexa McDonough | 301 | 9 | 9 | 21st | + 12 | 1,434,509 | 11.05% | + 4.17% | |
| Progressive-Conservative Party | Jean Charest | 301 | 2 | 2 | 20th | + 18 | 2,446,705 | 18.84% | + 2.80% | |
| Independent | 71 | 1 | 6th | 1 | 34,507 | 0.27% | - 0.46% | |||
| Green party | Joan Russow | 79 | 55,583 | 0.43% | + 0.19% | |||||
| Natural Law Party | Neil Paterson | 136 | 37,085 | 0.29% | - 0.34% | |||||
| Christian Heritage | Ron Gray | 53 | 29,085 | 0.22% | ||||||
| Not partisan | 5 | 26,252 | 0.20% | + 0.11% | ||||||
| Canadian Action Party | Paul Hellyer | 58 | 17,502 | 0.13% | ||||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Hardial Bains | 65 | 11,468 | 0.09% | + 0.05% | |||||
| vacant | 4th | |||||||||
| total | 2,155 | 295 | 295 | 301 | + 6 | 12,985,974 | 100.0% | |||
Result by provinces and territories
| Political party | BC | FROM | SK | MB | ON | QC | NB | NS | PE | NL | NW | YK | total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Party | Seats | 6th | 2 | 1 | 6th | 101 | 26th | 3 | 4th | 4th | 2 | 155 | |||
| Percentage ownership % | 28.8 | 24.0 | 24.7 | 34.3 | 49.5 | 36.7 | 32.9 | 28.4 | 44.8 | 37.9 | 43.1 | 22.0 | 38.5 | ||
| Reform party | Seats | 25th | 24 | 8th | 3 | 60 | |||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 43.1 | 54.6 | 36.0 | 23.7 | 19.1 | 0.3 | 13.1 | 9.7 | 1.5 | 2.5 | 11.7 | 25.3 | 19.4 | ||
| Bloc Québécois | Seats | 44 | 44 | ||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 37.9 | 10.7 | |||||||||||||
| New Democratic Party | Seats | 3 | 5 | 4th | 2 | 6th | 1 | 21st | |||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 18.2 | 5.7 | 30.9 | 23.2 | 10.7 | 2.0 | 18.4 | 30.4 | 15.1 | 22.0 | 20.9 | 28.9 | 11.0 | ||
| Progressive-Conservative Party | Seats | 1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 20th | |||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 6.2 | 14.4 | 7.8 | 17.8 | 18.8 | 22.2 | 35.0 | 30.8 | 38.3 | 36.8 | 16.7 | 13.9 | 18.8 | ||
| Independent | Seats | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 7.6 | 8.9 | 0.5 | ||||
| Green party | Percentage ownership % | 2.0 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.4 | ||||||||
| Natural Law Party | Percentage ownership % | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | |||
| Christian Heritage | Percentage ownership % | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 1.0 | 0.2 | |||||||
| Canadian Action Party | Percentage ownership % | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.1 | |||||||||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Percentage ownership % | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | |||||||||
| Totally sit | 34 | 26th | 14th | 14th | 103 | 75 | 10 | 11 | 4th | 7th | 2 | 1 | 301 | ||
Web links
- Elections Canada (Electoral Authority)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chretien sets Canadian election for June 2. CNN, April 28, 1997, accessed June 24, 2015 .
- ↑ Alan Frizzell, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 1997 . Dundurn Press, Toronto 1998, ISBN 978-1-55002-300-8 , pp. 45 .
- ^ A b Alan Frizzell, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 1997. p. 112.
- ↑ Alan Frizzell, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 1997. pp. 46, 118.
- ↑ Alan Frizzell, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 1997 S. 49th
- ^ Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums. Elections Canada, February 18, 2013, accessed July 4, 2015 .
