The 1993 Canadian federal election was held on October 25, 1993, to elect members to the House of Commons of the 35th Parliament of Canada. Considered to be a major political realignment, it was one of the most eventful elections in Canada's history. Two new regionalist parties emerged, finishing second and third in seat count. Most notably, the election marked the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level and one of the worst ever suffered by a governing party in the Western democratic world. The Liberal Party, led by Jean Chrétien, won a majority government, defeating the governing Progressive Conservative Party in a landslide. The 22.6% gap between the Liberals and the newly formed Reform Party is the largest difference between the top-two popular vote parties in Canadian federal election history.
The election was called on September 8, 1993, by the new Progressive Conservative (PC) leader, Prime Minister Kim Campbell, near the end of her party's five year mandate. When she succeeded longtime Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and assumed office on 25 June, the party was deeply unpopular due to the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords in 1990 and 1992, respectively, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in 1991, and the early 1990s recession. The PCs were further weakened by the emergence of new parties that were competing for its core supporters, including the western-based Reform Party of Canada and the Bloc Québécois advocating for Quebecois sovereignty and separatism, both of which ended up heavily splitting the PC vote.
Campbell's initial efforts helped the party recover somewhat in pre-election polls before the writs were issued on 8 September. However, this momentum did not last. The Progressive Conservatives launched a controversial attack ad during the campaign in hopes of staunching the bleeding. It did not work; the Progressive Conservatives suffered the most lopsided defeat for a Canadian governing party at the federal level, losing 154 seats and official party status in the House of Commons and more than half of their vote from 1988.
The Western-based Reform Party won over many traditional PC voters, particularly social conservatives, alienated Western Canadians, and fiscal conservatives who opposed the Mulroney government's deficit spending and tax increases. The popularity of Preston Manning, and profound Western discontent with the PCs, led the Reform Party to replace the PCs as the major right-wing party in the Commons, although it won only one seat east of Manitoba. Though the Progressive Conservatives recovered slightly in the 1997 election, they lost seats in 2000 and would never be a major force in Canadian politics again. In 2003, the Progressive Conservative Party ceased to exist when it merged with the larger Canadian Alliance (the successor of the Reform Party) to create the new Conservative Party of Canada.
The sovereigntist Bloc Québécois won almost half of the popular vote in Quebec and became the Official Opposition despite finishing fourth in the popular vote. To date, this is the only time that a party committed to the political secession of a region of Canada has become the Official Opposition of Canada, and the only time a party not first or second in the popular vote would form Opposition. (The Progressives won the second-most seats in 1921 with the third-most votes, but declined to form Opposition, and the second-place Conservatives did in lieu). The traditional third party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), collapsed to nine seats only one election after having what was then its best performance. It remained the NDP's worst result until the 2025 federal election. The turnover of MPs was stark and unprecedented for Canadian politics, with 132 MPs losing their seats. In total, 194 out of 295 ridings changed hands. Having been defeated in her Vancouver Centre riding, Campbell became the first incumbent prime minister since William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1945 to lose a House of Commons seat in a bid for re-election. This was the only election in Canadian history in which a governing party failed to win enough seats to attain official party status. This was also the first election since 1930 in which the winning party obtained a majority government without winning the most seats in Quebec.
Background
The Liberal Party had dominated Canadian politics for much of the 20th century. The party had been in office for all but 22 years between 1896 and 1984, with the Conservatives/Progressive Conservatives only forming government seven times during this period: in 1911, 1917, 1921 and 1926 (both under Arthur Meighen, without election), 1930, 1957, and 1979.
Mulroney era In 1984, Brian Mulroney led the Progressive Conservatives to a majority government with the most seats in Canadian history, winning a majority of the seats in every province and a majority of votes cast. The Liberals lost 95 seats in the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level at the time.
The PCs made a strong showing in Quebec, a province where they had held few seats for much of the century. Between 1896 and 1984, they had only taken a majority of seats in that province once, in their 1958 landslide—the only other time besides 1984 that a party won more than 200 seats in an election. After winning only one seat in Quebec (out of 75) in 1980, the Tories won 58 seats in 1984, leaving the Liberals with almost no seats outside of Montreal.
Mulroney's government was based on a coalition of socially conservative populists from the West, fiscal conservatives from Atlantic Canada and Ontario, and Quebec nationalists. This coalition helped him win reelection in 1988 (an election almost wholly focused on the proposed Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement) but with only a plurality of the votes cast this time. Over the next five years, the popularity of Mulroney and his party declined further. The late 1980s recession severely harmed the Canadian economy, as both unemployment and the public debt grew. Despite the government's pledges to reduce the annual federal deficit, it grew from $34.5 billion in 1984, when Mulroney took power, to more than $40 billion by the time Mulroney stepped down in 1993. The federal debt was at $500 billion in 1993.Bliss 312. Mulroney brought in the unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 1991 and his governing policies were broadly unpopular by early 1993.80% of Canadians disapproved of the GST in a June 1993 poll. Woolstencroft 32.
While Mulroney had railed against Pierre Trudeau's patronage appointments in 1984, he permitted a series of patronage appointments just as he left the PM's office in 1993.
Quebec constitutional status Mulroney had also promised to change the constitutional status quo in favour of increasing provincial autonomy; this was one of the most important reasons for his party's support in Quebec. He attempted to amend the constitution twice, but both reform proposals failed. The Meech Lake Accord collapsed in 1990 when the provincial legislatures of Newfoundland and Manitoba adjourned without bringing the issue to a vote; all 10 provincial legislatures had to ratify the accord for it to become law. The Charlottetown Accord was rejected by the Canadian people in an October 1992 referendum. In the case of the Charlottetown Accord, the majority of Canada's population voted against an agreement endorsed by every First Minister and most other political groups. This stinging rebuke against the "political class" in Canada was a preview of things to come, as the upcoming election would be held on October 25, 1993, a year less a day after the Charlottetown referendum. Additional polls in January 1993 concerning the cost-of-living crisis in the country showed that public opinion was broadly against the unpopular PCs.
Campbell replaces Mulroney These factors combined to make Mulroney the least popular leader since opinion polling began in the 1940s.Bliss 308. The Progressive Conservative Party's popularity reached a low of just over 15% in 1991.Brooks 194. With polls showing him facing almost certain defeat in the next election, Mulroney announced his retirement from politics (which had been speculated since early February) on 24 February 1993. While several senior Cabinet members had passed over contesting the leadership, Minister of Defence Kim Campbell quickly emerged as the leading candidate to replace Mulroney as party leader and prime minister. Despite a vigorous challenge from Environment Minister Jean Charest, Campbell emerged victorious in the June leadership election and became Canada's first female prime minister.
Campbell enjoyed a brief period of high popularity upon being sworn in, becoming the eponym of "Campbellmania", just as Pierre Trudeau had been the subject of late-1960s Trudeaumania. She was polling favorably by mid-March of that year. Campbell campaigned extensively during the summer, touring the nation and attending barbecues and other events.
Opposition parties The other traditional parties were also not faring well. While John Turner and the Liberal leadership supported the Meech Lake Accord, there was significant internal disagreement, with Trudeau returning from retirement to speak out against it. After the Liberals' disappointing showing in the 1988 election, Turner stayed on for a couple of years before resigning. The party then selected veteran politician Jean Chrétien over Paul Martin as party leader after a divisive battle, but Chrétien was unpopular, especially in his native Quebec, after declaring his opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, being rocked by caucus defections. The federal Liberals were disorganized, near bankruptcy, and dropped in the polls from 50 to 32 per cent, so Chrétien appointed Jean Pelletier as chief of staff to reinvigorate his leadership and reorganize his office. As the ruling Tories suffered the most backlash from the unsuccessful constitutional amendments in 1990 and 1992, the Liberals rapidly picked up support and surged to a wide lead in opinion polling.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) had won a record 43 seats in 1988 under Ed Broadbent, who retired the next year. In the following few years, their support continued to grow, at one point leading in the opinion polls. This helped the NDP win a series of victories at the provincial level. In a surprise victory in 1990, Bob Rae led the party to office in Ontario–the first time the NDP had formed a provincial government east of Manitoba. That same year, the NDP won a by-election in Quebec to take its first-ever seat in that province. The next year, under Mike Harcourt, the New Democrats were elected in British Columbia. Within a few years, however, the NDP provincial ministries in both Ontario and British Columbia became deeply unpopular, and support for the federal NDP also began to fall. In a deviation from their traditional position as staunch federalists, the NDP chose to align itself with the Liberals and PCs on the "yes" side of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord. As well, new leader Audrey McLaughlin made efforts to expand party support into Quebec instead of focusing on Western alienation, having defeated Dave Barrett, who had campaigned for the opposite policies. These positions gained the NDP little headway in Quebec and hurt the party's standing as the traditional voice of Western protest.
New parties The greatest difference from 1988 was the rise of two new parties that cut into the Progressive Conservatives' support and caused Mulroney's "grand coalition" to implode.