1988 Canadian federal election

Brian Mulroney led the Progressive Conservative Party to a landslide majority government victory in the 1984 federal election. Despite this achievement, scandals including patronage damaged his polling numbers. However, in his fourth year in office in 1988, his popularity began to recover; a poll a few days before the election call showed the Progressive Conservatives ahead of the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party.[2]

The Liberal Party led by John Turner suffered a heavy defeat in the 1984 election. Despite this, Turner stayed on as leader and was preparing to campaign for the second election. However, the Liberal Party was in financial and political disarray; by 1986 the party was heavily in debt and the expenses of the national organization continued to rise. Turner's office experienced significant staff turnover, and leaving members were willing to recount stories of the office's disfunction to the press, resulting in Turner's leadership being nicknamed a "reign of error".[3] Some pundits believed the Liberals would permanently drop to third place.[2]

In 1988, Mulroney reached an agreement on free trade with the United States. Turner's Liberal Party and Ed Broadbent's New Democratic Party opposed the agreement; Turner believed that the agreement would "Americanize" Canada. Mulroney used his large majority to pass the bill through the House of Commons, however, the Liberal-dominated Senate demanded an election before they would pass it. The election was called on October 1.[2][4]

The Liberals had some early struggles, notably during one day in Montreal where three different costs were given for the proposed Liberal daycare program.[5] When asked by reporters about the incident, Turner's chief of staff responded using vulgar language.[2] The campaign was also hampered by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) report that stated there was a movement in the backroom to replace Turner with Jean Chrétien, even though Turner had passed a leadership review in 1986 with 76.3 percent of delegates rejecting a leadership convention.[5]

Turner strongly campaigned against free trade, arguing that it would cost many Canadian jobs. His October 25 debate performance helped polls suggest a Liberal government; a week after the debate, the Liberals were six points ahead of the PCs. The Liberal surge prompted the PCs to stop the relatively calm campaign they had been running and instead run a more negative campaign, capitalizing on the perceived lack of public confidence in Turner, his perceived inability to lead the Liberal Party, and arguing that he only opposed free trade because of political opportunism. The PCs' poll numbers started to rebound.[2]

The Progressive Conservatives won a reduced but strong majority government with 169 seats, and the free trade agreement would go into effect on January 1, 1989. Mulroney was the first Conservative prime minister since John A. Macdonald to win more than one majority.

Despite the Liberals more than doubling their seat count from 38 to 83, the results were considered a disappointment for Turner, after polls in mid-campaign predicted a Liberal government. In an ironic reversal of most prior federal elections, the Liberals were kept out of power by their inability to make any headway into the overwhelming Tory majority in Quebec. Indeed, the Liberals actually lost five seats in Quebec. This second election loss sealed Turner's fate; he would eventually resign in 1990, and was succeeded by Jean Chrétien, who proved to be a more effective leader and when in government, accepted free trade with the United States and didn't overturn it.[2]

Despite the New Democratic Party enjoying their best result at the time (winning 43 seats), Ed Broadbent resigned as leader in 1989. Some NDP members were disappointed by the fact that they didn't become the Official Opposition.[2]

Had the Progressive Conservatives won a minority government, there would have been a strong possibility of the Liberals forming government with the New Democratic Party holding the balance of power, as these two left-of-centre parties would have made up the majority of seats in the House of Commons.

Party		Party leader	# of candidates	Seats				Popular vote
				1984	Dissol.	Elected	% Change	#	%	Change
	Progressive Conservative	Brian Mulroney	295	211	203	169	-19.9%	5,667,543	43.02%	-7.02pp
	Liberal	John Turner	294	40	38	83	+107.5%	4,205,072	31.92%	+3.89pp
	New Democratic Party	Ed Broadbent	295	30	32	43	+34.4%	2,685,263	20.38%	+1.57pp
	Reform	Preston Manning	72	*	-	-	*	275,767	2.09%	*
	Christian Heritage	Ed Vanwoudenberg	63	*	-	-	*	102,533	0.78%	*
	Rhinoceros	Cornelius the First	74	-	-	-	-	52,173	0.40%	-0.39pp
	Green	Seymour Trieger	68	-	-	-	-	47,228	0.36%	+0.14pp
	Confederation of Regions	Elmer Knutson	51	-	-	-	-	41,342	0.31%	-0.68pp
	Libertarian	Dennis Corrigan	88	-	-	-	-	33,135	0.25%	+0.06pp
	No affiliation		100	-	-	-		24,516	0.19%	-0.12pp
	Independent		55	1	4	-	-	22,982	0.17%	-0.01pp
	Commonwealth of Canada	Gilles Gervais	58	-	-	-	-	7,467	0.06%	-0.21pp
	Communist	George Hewison	51	-	-	-	-	7,066	0.05%	-0.01pp
	Social Credit	Harvey Lainson	9	-	-	-	-	3,407	0.03%	-0.10pp
	Vacant				5
	Total		1,573	282	282	295	+4.6%	13,175,494	100%

Note:

"% change" refers to change from previous election

A number of unregistered parties also contested the election. The Western Canada Concept party, led by Doug Christie, fielded three candidates in British Columbia. The Western Independence Party ran one candidate in British Columbia, seven in Alberta, and three in Manitoba (although one of the Manitoba candidates appears to have withdrawn before election day).

The Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Emmanuel Feuerwerker, withdrew from the race after suffering a heart attack, resulting in the Liberals not running a candidate in all 295 ridings during this election.

The Marxist–Leninist Party fielded candidates in several ridings.

Blair T. Longley campaigned in British Columbia as a representative of the "Student Party". Newspaper reports indicate that this was simply a tax-avoidance scheme.

The moribund Social Credit Party fielded nine candidates, far short of the 50 required for official recognition. However, the Chief Electoral Officer allowed the party's name to appear on the ballot by virtue of its half-century history as a recognized party. It would be the last time that the party, which had been the third-largest or fourth-largest party in Canada at its height, would fight an election under its own name. The party was deregistered before the 1993 election after it failed to nominate enough candidates to keep its registration.

xx - less than 0.05% of the popular vote.

Note: Parties that captured less than 1% of the vote in a province are not recorded.

Until the 2011 federal election, the 1988 election was the most successful in the New Democratic Party's history. The party dominated in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, won significant support in Ontario and elected its first (and, until the 2008 election, only) member from Alberta.

This was the second election contested by the Green Party, and it saw a more than 50 percent increase in its vote, but it remained a minor party.

The election was the last for Canada's Social Credit Party. The party won no seats, and won an insignificant portion of the popular vote.

This was the first election for the newly founded Reform Party which for this vote only contested seats in Western Canada. The party at this stage was filled to a large extent with former Socreds along with some former PC supporters disaffected at the perceived lack of support from the Mulroney government for western interests. It was led by Preston Manning, who was himself a one time Socred candidate and the son of longtime Alberta Social Credit premier Ernest Manning.

Reform won no seats and was not yet considered a major party at the national level. However, Deborah Grey would win the first seat for Reform, Beaver River in Alberta, in a by-election held four months later. Grey, who had finished a distant fourth running in the same riding in the general election, succeeded rookie Progressive Conservative MP John Dahmer. Dahmer was in office for only five days before dying of pancreatic cancer.

For the Progressive Conservatives, this was the last federal election they would ever win.

• Number of parties: 11
  • First appearance: Christian Heritage Party, Reform Party
  • Final appearance: Confederation of Regions Party, Social Credit Party
  • Final appearance before hiatus: Communist Party (returned in 2000), Rhinoceros Party (returned in 2006)

• 1911 Canadian federal election, an election similarly contested over free trade with the United States.
• List of Canadian federal general elections
• List of political parties in Canada

Articles on parties' candidates in this election:

• Riding map
• Election 1988, by Stephen Azzi
• Debate '88