The 1984 Canadian federal election was held on September 4, 1984, to elect members to the House of Commons of the 33rd Parliament of Canada, following the dissolution of the House on July 9. The Progressive Conservative Party, led by Brian Mulroney, won a landslide victory, defeating the incumbent governing Liberal Party led by Prime Minister John Turner. The Progressive Conservatives won 211 seats, the most seats in the House in Canadian political history, and regained power for the first time since 1979. This was the first election since 1958 in which the Progressive Conservatives won a majority government, and is also the only time since 1958 that Canada's governing party received an actual majority of votes cast. It was also the first election since 1962 in which the Progressive Conservatives won the popular vote.
Mulroney's victory came as a result of his building of a 'grand coalition' that comprised social conservatives from the West, Red Tories from the East, Quebec nationalists, and fiscal conservatives. Winning 74.8 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons meant he won the second-largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with only Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's triumph in the 1958 federal election, at 78.5 per cent, being higher. This was the last time that the winning party won every province and territory and the last time that the winning party received over 50 per cent of the national popular vote. The Liberals suffered what at that time was the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level (in terms of percentage of seats), until the new record would be set in 1993 by the Progressive Conservatives themselves. The NDP lost a single seat in the House of Commons.
The election marked the end of the Liberals' long dominance of federal politics in Quebec, a province which had been the bedrock of Liberal support for almost a century, and the beginning of a nine-year hold on power by the Progressive Conservatives. The Liberals would not win a majority of Quebec seats again until three decades later in 2015. The Progressive Conservatives would later be reelected with a majority in 1988 before collapsing entirely in 1993.
Background
The election was fought almost entirely on the record of the Liberals, who had been in power for all but one year since 1963.
Pierre Trudeau, who had been prime minister from 1968 to 1979 and again since 1980, retired from politics in early 1984. He was succeeded by John Turner, a former Cabinet minister under both Trudeau and Lester B. Pearson.
Turner had been out of politics for nine years; he was not an MP during this election campaign. Upon assuming the leadership, he made immediate changes in an attempt to rebuild the Liberals' struggling reputation. For example, he announced that he would not run in a by-election to return to the House of Commons, but would instead run in the next general election as the Liberal candidate in Vancouver Quadra, British Columbia. This was a sharp departure from usual practice for a Westminster system, in which the incumbent in a safe seat resigns to allow a newly elected party leader a chance to get into Parliament. But the Liberal Party had lost favour with western Canadians, and policies such as the National Energy Program only aggravated this sentiment. Turner's plan to run in a western Canada riding was, in part, an attempt to rebuild support in that region. Going into the election, the Liberals held only one seat west of Ontario—that of Lloyd Axworthy, from Winnipeg—Fort Garry, Manitoba.
More seriously, there was great disaffection in Quebec with the Liberal government, despite their traditional support for the party. Conflict between the provincial and federal parties, a series of scandals, and the 1982 patriation of the Canadian constitution without the approval of the Quebec provincial government had damaged the Liberals' brand in the province. Hoping for success in Quebec, leader Joe Clark began actively courting soft nationalist voters in the province. This was also a main reason why businessman Brian Mulroney, a fluently bilingual native of Quebec, was chosen as Clark's replacement.
Although Turner was not required to call an election until 1985, internal data initially showed that the Liberals had regained the lead in opinion polls. Turner and his advisers were also mindful of the fact that Trudeau had seemingly missed an opportunity to take advantage of favourable opinion polls in the latter half of the 1970s, when he waited the full five years to call an election only to go down to an (albeit temporary) defeat. Additionally, several by-election losses and floor crossings had eroded the large majority that the Liberals had won four years earlier. By 1984, the Liberals' position in the house had been whittled down close to being a minority government, leaving Turner in danger of being toppled by a motion of no confidence, in addition to the fact that Turner himself was not actually a member of the House of Commons, something that had not been the case for any Prime Minister since Sir Mackenzie Bowell nearly 90 years earlier. With this in mind, the new Prime Minister requested that Queen Elizabeth II delay her tour of Canada, and asked Governor General Jeanne Sauvé to dissolve Parliament on July 9. In accordance with Canadian constitutional practice, Sauvé granted the request and set the election for September 4.
Name changes for electoral districts The following ridings had their names changed between the 1980 and 1984 elections:
Former name Changed toArgenteuil Argenteuil—PapineauBerthier—Maskinongé Berthier—Maskinongé—LanaudièreCochrane Cochrane—SuperiorDauphin Dauphin—Swan RiverHastings—Frontenac Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and AddingtonHull Hull—AylmerLaprairie La PrairieMercier Montreal—MercierMissisquoi Brome—MissisquoiMontmorency Montmorency—OrléansNotre-Dame-de-Grâce Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine EastRichmond Richmond—WolfeRimouski Rimouski—TémiscouataSaint-Hyacinthe Saint-Hyacinthe—BagotSaint-Michel Saint-Michel—AhuntsicSainte-Marie Montreal—Sainte-MarieSarnia Sarnia—LambtonVerdun Verdun—Saint-Paul
Campaign Contests + Candidate contests in the ridingsCandidates nominated Ridings PartyPCLibNDPRhinoGreenTotals 3 47 47 47 47 141 4 65 65 65 65 18 4 8 13 3 3 13 3 260 5 58 58 58 58 11 15 15 19 9 14 13 10 10 290 6 59 59 59 59 21 34 27 18 23 13 13 14 14 354 7 31 31 31 31 9 18 12 11 18 19 9 14 14 217 8 13 13 13 13 11 9 7 8 7 6 5 5 7 104 9 8 8 8 8 11 8 5 2 5 4 2 5 6 72 11 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 11 Total 282 282 282 282 85 89 74 72 66 60 55 51 51 1,449
During the campaign The Liberals' early lead began to slip as Turner made several prominent gaffes. In particular, he spoke of creating new "make work programs", a concept from earlier decades that had been replaced by the less patronizing-sounding "job creation programs". He also was caught on camera patting Liberal Party president Iona Campagnolo on her posterior. Turner defended this action as being a friendly gesture, but it was seen by many as condescending.
Other voters turned against the Liberals due to their mounting legacy of patronage and corruption. An especially important issue was Trudeau's recommendation that Sauvé appoint over 200 Liberals to patronage posts just before he left office. This action enraged Canadians on all sides. Turner had the right to advise that the appointments be withdrawn, which Sauvé would have had to do according to constitutional convention. However, Turner not only didn't do so, but appointed more than 70 Liberals to patronage posts himself despite a promise to bring a new way of politics to Ottawa. He cited a written agreement with Trudeau, claiming that if Trudeau had made the appointments, the Liberals would have almost certainly lost the election. However, the fact that Turner dropped the writ a year early hurt his argument.
Turner found out that Mulroney was allegedly setting up a patronage machine in anticipation of victory. At the English-language televised debate between Mulroney, Turner and New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent, Turner started to attack Mulroney on his patronage plans, comparing them to the patronage machine run by old Union Nationale in Quebec. However, Mulroney turned the tables by pointing to the raft of patronage appointments made on the advice of Trudeau and Turner. Claiming that he'd gone so far as to apologize for making light of "these horrible appointments," Mulroney demanded that Turner apologize to the country for not cancelling the appointments advised by Trudeau and for recommending his own appointments. Turner was visibly surprised, and could only reply that "I had no option" except to let the appointments stand. Mulroney famously responded:
You had an option, sir. You could have said, 'I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada, and I am not going to ask Canadians to pay the price.' You had an option, sir—to say 'no'—and you chose to say 'yes' to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party. That sir, if I may say respectfully, that is not good enough for Canadians.
Turner, clearly flustered by this withering riposte from Mulroney, could only repeat "I had no option." A visibly angry Mulroney called this "an avowal of failure" and "a confession of non-leadership." He told Turner, "You had an option, sir. You could have done better." Mulroney's counterattack led most of the papers the next day; it was often paraphrased as "You had an option, sir; you could have said 'no'." Many observers saw this as the end of any realistic chance for Turner to stay in power.
Final days
The last days of the campaign saw multiple Liberal blunders pile together. Turner continued to refer to "make work projects" and made other gaffes that caused voters to see him as a relic from the past. Even Trudeau himself did not campaign for Turner, instead only making appearances to support Liberal candidates.
Besides the Tories, the NDP also benefited from the slip in Liberal support. Under Broadbent, the party had seen greater support in opinion polling than ever before, and had actually replaced the Liberals as the second party in much of western Canada.
Opinion polling
National results
All numerical results from Elections Canada's Official Report on the Thirty-Third Election.
PartyParty leader# ofcandidatesSeatsPopular vote1980DissolutionElected% Change#%Change Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney282103100211+104.9%6,278,81850.03% +17.59pp Liberal John Turner28214713540-72.8%3,516,48628.02%-16.32pp New Democratic Ed Broadbent282323130-6.3%2,359,91518.81%-0.97ppNo affiliation120--1 39,2980.31%+0.29pp Cornelius the First88----99,1780.79%-0.22pp Parti nationaliste du Québec2 Denis Monière74**-*85,8650.68%0.55pp Elmer Knutson55**-*65,6550.52%* Trevor Hancock60**-*26,9210.21%* Victor Levis72----23,5140.19%+0.05ppIndependent65-1--22,0670.18%+0.04pp Ken Sweigard51----16,6590.13%-1.56pp William Kashtan51----7,4790.06%+x Gilles Gervais66**-*7,0070.06%* Vacant15 Total1,449282282282-12,548,862100% Sources: http://www.elections.ca—History of Federal Ridings since 1867
Notes:
"% change" refers to change from previous election.
x – less than 0.05% of the popular vote.
1 Tony Roman was elected in the Toronto-area riding of York North as a "coalition candidate", defeating incumbent PC MP John Gamble. Roman drew support from Progressive Conservatives who were upset by Gamble's extreme-right-wing views.
2 Results of the Parti nationaliste du Québec are compared to those of the Union Populaire in the 1980 election.
The Revolutionary Workers League fielded five candidates: Michel Dugré, Katy Le Rougetel, Larry Johnston, Bonnie Geddes and Bill Burgess. All appeared on the ballot as independent or non-affiliated candidates, as the party was unregistered.
Vote and seat summaries
Results by province