2000 Canadian Federal Election

The 2000 Canadian federal election was held on November 27, 2000, to elect members to the House of Commons of Canada of the 37th Parliament of Canada. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's Liberal Party won a third majority government.

Since the previous election of 1997, small-c conservatives had begun attempts to merge the Reform Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada as part of the United Alternative agenda. During that time, Jean Charest stepped down as leader of the Progressive Conservatives and former Prime Minister Joe Clark took over the party and opposed any union with the Reform Party. In the spring of 2000, the Reform Party became the Canadian Alliance, a political party dedicated to uniting conservatives together into one party. Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning lost in a leadership race to Stockwell Day who became leader of the new Canadian Alliance party.

The federal government called an early election after being in office for just over three years (with a maximum allowed mandate of five years). The governing Liberal Party of Canada won a third consecutive majority government, winning more seats than in 1997. The Canadian Alliance only made minor gains, and an Eastern breakthrough did not happen. The Bloc Québécois, New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservatives all suffered slight losses.

This was the last election as of in which an incumbent government successfully defended its parliamentary majority. It was also the last election in which a single party won more than 40% of the vote, although the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper in 2011 (39.62%) and the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau in 2015 (39.47%) would both come close. This was the only election contested by the Canadian Alliance and the last by the Progressive Conservatives (as they both merged into the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003). This was also the first election in which Nunavut was its own separate territory (before, it was part of the Northwest Territories).

Campaign

On October 22, 2000, Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Jean Chrétien advised Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to dissolve parliament and call an election scheduled for November 27, 2000. This move has been viewed by commentators as an attempt to stem a possible rise of support to the newly formed Canadian Alliance, to stop the leadership ambitions of Paul Martin, and to capitalize on the nostalgia created by the recent death of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. At the time of the election, the Canadian economy was strong and there were few immediate negative issues, as the opposition parties were not prepared for the campaign.

The major issue in the election was health care which had risen in public opinion polls to be the most important issue for Canadians.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 122.

The public was largely uninterested in the election, with commentators stating that voters expected a repeat of previous regionally divided elections that offered little chance of a change of government.

The Liberals' final television advertisement, according to Stephen Clarkson's ''The Big Red Machine'', "emphasized the contrast between he Liberals and the Canadian Alliancewhile warning voters about C leaderJoe Clark's claim that he would form a coalition with the Bloc Québécois in a minority government. The ad told Canadians not to take risks with other parties but to choose a strong, proven team".

Political parties

Liberal Party

The Liberal Party entered the election with a record of ending the budgetary deficit, making major reductions in federal spending (such as by cuts to the civil service, privatization of crown corporations), creating new environmental regulations, and increasing spending beginning on social programs beginning in 1998 after the budget deficit had ended and a surplus had been achieved.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 16. The Liberal Party came under attack by opposition parties for irregularities in the Department of Human Resources' Transition Job Fund program, but Chrétien managed to capably defend the government's actions. Chrétien was directly attacked by the opposition parties for alleged corrupt involvement from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in providing funding to local projects in Chrétien's riding of Saint-Maurice. The Liberal Party focused its attacks on the Canadian Alliance, accusing it of being a dangerous right-wing movement that was dangerous to national unity. The Liberal Party's most tense problem was the ongoing leadership feud within the Liberal Party between Chrétien and Finance Minister Paul Martin who wanted to replace Chrétien as Liberal leader and Prime Minister.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 115.

Strategy

Due to the regionalized nature of previous elections, the Liberal Party designed its election strategy along regional lines, aiming to take every seat in Ontario, winning seats in Quebec from the Bloc Québécois, and winning seats in Atlantic Canada, while attempting to minimize losses in Western Canada to the Canadian Alliance.

Chrétien only spent parts of nine days campaigning in the West, including only two stops in the province of Alberta, both in the city of Edmonton while visiting the province of British Columbia only three times, and only in the cities of Victoria and Vancouver.

The Liberal Party focused its effort in regaining support in Atlantic Canada, where the party had suffered serious losses in the 1997 election to the New Democratic Party and Progressive Conservative Party due to the Liberal government's imposition of quotas on Atlantic Canadian cod fisheries and the government's cuts to unemployment insurance benefits.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 20. Chrétien gained support during the campaign from former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna and former Chrétien government minister and then the current Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Brian Tobin resigned as Premier and ran as a Liberal Party candidate in his province. During the campaign, Chrétien apologized to Atlantic Canadians for the negative impact of employment insurance reforms which had caused hardship in Atlantic Canada.

In Quebec, the Liberal Party benefited from the collapse of support for the Progressive Conservative Party, after the PCs' popular Québécois leader Jean Charest had resigned in 1998 and was replaced by former Prime Minister Joe Clark who was unpopular in Quebec which resulted in three PC members from Quebec defecting to join the Liberal Party prior to the election. In Quebec the recently passed Clarity Act by the federal government was controversial in that it demanded a clear and concise question on a new referendum on sovereignty.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 22. Chrétien defended the Clarity Act and attacked sovereigntist Quebec premier and former Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard, challenging him to hold another referendum on sovereignty under the new laws, as Chrétien expected that the sovereigntists would lose such a referendum. The Liberal Party promised a number of government projects in Quebec to woo Quebec voters to the Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party appealed to Canada's most populous province of Ontario by acting to restore funding that its government had cut in the 1990s in order to cut the deficit of the 1990s.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 24. The Liberal government established a health accord with all premiers in September 2000 that involved major projected increases to public health care spending. Overall, the Liberals increased their number of seats in the House of Commons from 155 seats to 172 seats. They also won the popular vote in their former stronghold of Quebec for the first time since 1980, though they narrowly fell short of winning the most seats in the province, winning 36 seats to the Bloc's 38.

Canadian Alliance

The Canadian Alliance (the common short form name of Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance) was a new political party in the election, having been created only months earlier as the successor to the Reform Party of Canada, a party founded as a Western Canada protest party which sought to become a national party in the 1990s.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 59. Reform Party leader Preston Manning was deeply disappointed with the Reform Party's failure to spread eastward in the 1997 election, as the Reform Party lost its only seat in Ontario in that election.Dornan, Christopher; Pammett, Jon H. Pp. 60. Reform identified vote-splitting with its rival conservative movement, the Progressive Conservative Party as the cause for the Liberals' 1997 election victory, and Manning proposed the solution of a merger of the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties. This agenda by the Reform Party to unite the two parties was called the United Alternative which began in 1998, and ultimately resulted in the Alliance.

The new party subsequently elected Stockwell Day as leader over Manning. The Alliance had hoped to use the 2000 election to eclipse the PC party in Ontario and Eastern Canada. The Alliance dedicated its campaign to demonstrating that the party was a national party and not as western-based as its predecessor had been perceived as. Day's more media friendly and "easy going" persona was expected to appeal to more Ontario voters than Manning's reputation as a policy wonk