Canadian federal election, 2004 Details, Meaning Canadian federal election, 2004 Article and Explanation Guide

Canadian federal election, 2004 Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

A Canadian federal election (more formally, the 38th general election) was held on June 28, 2004. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin lost its majority, but was able to form a minority government after the elections. The main opposition party, the Conservative Party of Canada, improved its position but did not win as many seats as hoped.

For seat-by-seat results, see Results of the Canadian federal election, 2004.
''For a timeline of major events and campaign stops, see Timeline of the Canadian federal election, 2004
For maps showing party strenghts by region and by riding see Canadian federal election, 2004 map gallery

On May 23, 2004, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, on the advice of Martin, ordered the dissolution of the House of Commons. Following a 36-day campaign, voters elected 308 Members of the House of Commons.

All three major national parties had changed their leaders since the 2000 elections. Although the election was initially widely expected to be a relatively easy romp for Martin to a fourth consecutive Liberal majority government, during the campaign many began instead to predict a far more closely-fought election. Polls started to indicate the possibility of a minority government for the Liberals, or even a minority Conservative government, fueling speculation of coalitions with the other parties. In the end, the Liberals fared better than the final opinion polls had led them to fear, but not well enough to win a majority.

On election day, polling times were arranged to allow results from most provinces to be announced more or less simultaneously, with the exception of Atlantic Canada, where results were known before the close of polling in other provinces.

Results

A party must hold 155 seats to form a majority government. The Liberals came short of this number, winning 135. Until extremely close ridings were decided on the west coast, it appeared as though the Liberals' seat total, if combined with that of the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP), would be sufficient to hold a majority in the House of Commons. In the end, the Conservatives won Vancouver Island North, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast, and New Westminster-Coquitlam, after trailing in all three ridings, as sub-totals were announced through the evening.

As a result, the combined seat count of the Liberals and the NDP was 154, while the other 154 seats belonged to the Conservatives, Bloquistes, and one independent Chuck Cadman (previously a Conservative). This could signal an evenly-split house; however, some indications suggested that, rather than forming an official coalition with the NDP, the Liberal party would attempt to lead with a minority government, obtaining majorities for their legislation on an ad hoc basis.

Voter turnout nationwide was 60.5%, with 13,484,260 out of 22,295,670 registered voters casting their ballots. This was comparable to the turnout of 61.2% in the 2000 federal election.

National

37.5
Party	Party Leader	Seats			Popular Vote
Party	Party Leader	Before	After	% Change	#	%
Liberal	Paul Martin	168	135	align="right"
4,951,107	36.7
Conservative	Stephen Harper	72	99	align="right"
3,994,682	29.6
Bloc Québécois	Gilles Duceppe	33	54	+63.6	1,672,874	12.4
New Democratic	Jack Layton	14	19	+35.7	2,116,536	15.7
Green	Jim Harris	0	0	0	580,816	4.3
Christian Heritage	Ron Gray		0	0	40,283	0.3
Marijuana	Marc-Boris St-Maurice	0	0	0	33,590	0.3
Progressive Canadian	Ernie Schreiber		0	0	10,773	0.1
Marxist-Leninist	Sandra L. Smith	0	0	0	9,065	0.1
Canadian Action	Connie Fogal	0	0	0	8,930	0.1
Communist	Miguel Figueroa	0	0	0	4,568	0.0
Libertarian	Jean-Serge Brisson		0	0	1,964	0.0
Independent		10	0	N/A	47,596	0.4
No Affiliation		0	1	N/A	17,465	0.1
Vacant		4	0	N/A
Total		301	308	+2.3	13,489,559	100.0
Other elections: 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2005?
Sources: http://www.elections.ca -- History of Federal Ridings since 1867

n.a. = not applicable - party was not recognized in previous election

10 closest ridings

Western Arctic, NT: Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Lib) def. Dennis Bevington (NDP) by 53 votes
Jeanne-Le Ber, QC: Liza Frulla (Lib) def. Thierry St-Cyr (BQ) by 72 votes
Simcoe—Grey, ON: Helena Guergis (Cons) def. Paul Bonwick (Lib) by 100 votes
New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC: Paul Forseth (Cons) def. Steve McClurg (NDP) by 113 votes
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK: Tom Lukiwski (Cons) def. Gary Anderson (Lib) by 122 votes
Palliser, SK: Daver Batters (Cons) def. Dick Proctor (NDP) by 124 votes
'Edmonton—Beaumont, AB\': David Kilgour (Lib) def. Tim Uppal (Cons) by 134 votes
Cambridge, ON: Gary Goodyear (Cons) def. Janko Peric (Lib) by 224 votes
Kildonan—St. Paul, MB: Joy Smith (Cons) def. Terry Duguid (Lib) by 278 votes
Northumberland—Quinte West, ON: Paul Macklin (Lib) def. Doug Galt (Cons) by 313 votes

Province by Province breakdown

Province and Territory tables

Showing change from the 2000 election. The votes and seats won by the Conservative Party are compared with the combined totals won by the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party in 2000. (Results are after approx. 99% of polls closed)

ALBERTA (99.7% of polls reporting)

BRITISH COLUMBIA (99.8% of polls reporting)

MANITOBA (99.6% of polls reporting)

NEW BRUNSWICK (99.8% of polls reporting)

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR (100% of polls reporting)

Registered voters: 403,568 Votes cast: 198,366 49.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Party Votes % Change Seats ------------------------------------------------------------ Liberal Party 95,178 48.0 +03.0 5 Conservative Party 64,120 32.3 -06.0 2 New Democratic Party 34,694 17.5 +04.5 - Green Party 3,119 01.6 Independents 1,255 00.6 ------------------------------------------------------------ Total 198,366 7 ------------------------------------------------------------

NOVA SCOTIA (99.6% of polls reporting)

ONTARIO (99.5% of polls reporting)

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND (100% of polls reporting)

QUEBEC (99.7% of polls reporting)

SASKATCHEWAN (99.7% of polls reporting)

TERRITORIES

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES (100% of polls reporting)

Registered voters: 28,335 Votes cast: 13,471 47.5 ------------------------------------------------------------ Party Votes % Change Seats ------------------------------------------------------------ Liberal Party 5,313 39.4 -06.2 1 New Democratic Party 5,261 39.1 +12.4 - Conservative Party 2,314 17.2 +07.2 - Green Party 583 04.3 - ------------------------------------------------------------ Total 13,471 1 ------------------------------------------------------------

NUNAVUT (96.6% of polls reporting)

Registered voters: 16,872 Votes cast: 7,243 42.9 ------------------------------------------------------------ Party Votes % Change Seats ------------------------------------------------------------ Liberal Party 3,705 51.2 -17.3 1 New Democratic Party 1,108 15.3 -03.3 - Conservative Party 1,049 14.5 +06.1 - Green Party 208 02.9 -01.6 Independents 1,173 16.2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Total 7,243 1 ------------------------------------------------------------

YUKON TERRITORY (98.9% of polls reporting)

Source: Adam Carr's Electoral Archive

Seat by Seat breakdown

See Results of the Canadian federal election, 2004

Notes

Number of Parties: 12
First appearance: Conservative Party of Canada, Progressive Canadian Party
Reappearance after hiatus: Christian Heritage Party of Canada, Libertarian Party of Canada

Major Parties

Main article: List of political parties in Canada

Liberal Party of Canada

Until the sponsorship scandal, most pundits were predicting that new Prime Minister Paul Martin would lead the Liberals to a fourth majority government, possibly setting a record for number of seats won.

However, polls released immediately after the scandal broke showed Liberal support down as much as 10% nationwide, with greater declines in its heartland of Quebec and Ontario. Although there was some recovery in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, Liberal hopes of making unprecedented gains in the west faded. The unopularity of some provincial Liberal parties may also have had an effect on federal Liberal fortunes. In Ontario, for instance, the provincial Liberal government introduced an unpopular budget the week of the expected election call, and their federal counterparts then fell into a statistical dead heat with the Conservatives in polls there. The Liberals were also been harmed by high profile party infighting.

The campaign was criticized openly by Liberal candidates, one incumbent Liberal comparing it to the Keystone Kops. The campaign was not helped by Martin being out of the country for the third week of the campaign attending the D-Day anniversary services and a meeting of the G8. It wasn't helped either by the passing of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan on June 5, which may have had an impact on the election, understanding that he was a very close friend of the country. (Martin did not attend the state funeral on June 11, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who gave one of the eulogies, and his wife, Mila, represented Canada at the service. Later that evening, Clarkson presided over the firing of a 50-gun salute on Parliament Hill along with Defence Staff Chief General Ray Henault, and U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci. The latter two also presided over the firing of a 21-gun salute along with Defence Minister David Pratt. Cellucci requested both salutes be fired on Parliament Hill.)

Conservative Party of Canada

In the final months of 2003, the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance were running a distant third and fourth, respectively, in public opinion polls.

Many pundits predicted that the combination of the popular and fiscally conservative Martin, along with continued vote-splitting on the right, could have led to the almost total annihilation of the Progressive Conservatives and Canadian Alliance. This fear prompted those two parties to form a united Conservative Party of Canada, which was approved by the Canadian Alliance on December 5, 2003 and by the Progressive Conservatives on December 6, 2003.

The new Conservative Party pulled well ahead of the NDP in the polls just before the election, although its support remained below the combined support that the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance had as separate parties. On March 20 the Conservatives elected Stephen Harper as their new leader.

The Conservatives gained more ground in polls after Harper became leader, and the poll results in the weeks before the election had them within one to two points of the Liberals, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind them. Party supporters hoped that the voters would react negatively to the Liberal attacks on Harper's agenda, and that anger over the sponsorship scandal and other Liberal failures would translate to success at the polls. Although on the eve of the election the party was polling slightly ahead of the Liberals everywhere west of Quebec, it had dropped in support, polling behind or at par with Liberals everywhere except Alberta and British Columbia, where it held onto its traditional support.

Reagan's passing helped the Conservatives gain seats as they knew of the good relationship he had with Mulroney, a Conservative.

New Democratic Party

Before the announcement of the union of the right-of-centre parties, some were predicting an NDP official opposition, with the NDP polling ahead of both right-of-centre parties. A new leader (Jack Layton) and clear social democratic policies helped revitalize the NDP. Polls suggested that the NDP had returned to the 18% to 20% level of support it enjoyed in the 1984 Canadian election and 1988 Canadian election. Layton suggested that the NDP would win more than the 43 seats won under Ed Broadbent.

The NDP focused the campaign on winning ridings in Canada's urban centres, hoping especially to pick off seats in central Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and Winnipeg. The party's platform was built to cater to these regions and much of Layton's time was spent in these areas.

The campaign stumbled early when the Liberals attacked Layton for blaming the deaths of homeless people on Paul Martin. They accused the NDP of negative campaigning. The NDP did benefit from the decline in Liberal support, but not to the same extent as the Conservatives. There was an increasing prospect that NDP voters would switch to the Liberals to block a Conservative government. This concern did not manifest itself in the polls, however, and the NDP remained at somewhat below 20 percent mark in the polls for most of the campaign.

Bloc Québécois

The Bloc Québécois (BQ) continued to slide in the polls in most of 2003 after the election of the federalist Quebec Liberal Party at the National Assembly of Quebec under Jean Charest, and during the long run-up to Paul Martin becoming leader of the federal Liberals.

However, things progressively changed during 2003, partly because of the Charest government rapidly becoming quite unpopular and partly because the support for independence in Quebec rose again (49% in March). The tide took its sharp turn when, in February 2004, the sponsorship scandal (uncovered in considerable part by the Bloc) hit the liberal federal government.

These events led to a resurgence of the BQ, putting it ahead of the pack once again: according to an Ipsos-Reid poll carried out for the Globe and Mail and CTV between the 4th and the 8th of June, 50% of Quebecers intended to vote for the BQ against 24% for the Liberals.

Speculation was ongoing about the possibility of the Bloc forming alliances with other opposition parties or with an eventual minority government to promote its goals of social democracy and respect of the autonomy of provinces. Leader Gilles Duceppe stated that the Bloc, as before, would co-operate with other opposition parties or with the government when interests were found to be in common, but that the Bloc would not participate in a coalition government.

Minor Parties

Main article: List of political parties in Canada

The following parties did not hold seats in the House of Commons entering the election, and received considerably less media attention throughout the election than their larger competitors. The Greens ran candidates in all 308 ridings; the other parties were running far fewer candidates.

Green Party	Jim Harris	308 candidates
Marxist-Leninist Party	Sandra L. Smith	76 candidates
Marijuana Party	Marc-Boris St-Maurice	71 candidates
Christian Heritage Party	Ron Gray	62 candidates
Canadian Action Party	Connie Fogal	44 candidates
Communist Party	Miguel Figueroa	35 candidates
Progressive Canadian Party	Ernie Schreiber	16 candidates
Libertarian Party	Jean-Serge Brisson	8 candidates

Campaign Slogans

These are the official slogans for the 2004 campaigns. The optional parts of the mottos (sometimes not used for efficiency) are put in brackets.

Liberal Party	Moving [Canada] Forward - Allons [or Aller] droit devant (avec l'Équipe Martin)	Choose your Canada
Conservative Party	Demand Better - C'est assez!
Bloc Québécois	Un parti propre au Québec	Parce qu'on est différent (pre-election)
New Democratic Party	[New Energy.] A Positive Choice. - [Une force nouvelle.] Un choix Positif.
Green Party	Someday is now - L'avenir c'est maintenant
Marijuana Party	Let's roll! - Y faut que ça roule!

Issues

Important issues in the election:

Sponsorship scandal: badly hurt the Liberals in the polls and the theme of widespread corruption was used by all opposition parties, especially the Bloc.
Health care: all parties support Canada's government-administered health care system but acknowledge that improvements must be made to meet new demographic challenges and to reduce long wait times. Transfer payments to the provinces have been cut substantially to 16% by the federal Liberal government and it was difficult for Paul Martin to reconcile these cuts with his plan to improve the system.
Fiscal imbalance: all major parties except the Liberals claimed that there was a monetary imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces and spoke of plans to reduce it, the Bloc Québécois probably being the strongest denouncer of the situation.
Taxation: for the Conservatives, significantly lowering taxes, to stimulate the economy, was a central issue. The Conservatives also promised to end "corporate welfare" and replace it with tax cuts for all businesses. The Liberals and NDP opposed large tax cuts and argued that money should instead be spent to improve social programs.
Parliamentary reform: The Conservatives accused the Liberals of perpetuating "undemocratic practices" in Parliament, by limiting the powers of MPs. Martin called for some reform, but not to the satisfaction of the Conservatives. The Conservatives promised an elected Senate and standing committee and provincial review of judicial appointments. The NDP spoke of abolishing the Senate.
Electoral reform: Conservatives promised fixed election dates. The NDP and the Green Party promoted the idea of proportional representation voting.
Same-sex marriage: Both the Bloc Québécois and NDP strongly favoured same sex marriage. The NDP considers it a human rights issue, and requires its MPs to either support legislation favouring same-sex marriage or abstain on such questions. The Bloc, on the other hand, treats it as a matter of conscience, allowing its members free votes on the issue. The Liberals sent the issue to be ruled upon by the Supreme Court, and the Liberal caucus was publicly divided on the issue. The majority of Conservative candidates opposed it; the party's official stance was for the issue to be resolved by a free vote in the Commons.
National Missile Defence: the Bush administration in the U.S. wanted Canada to join the missile shield. The Conservatives strongly supported such a plan while the Bloc and NDP opposed it. Although the Liberals reiterated past opposition to the weaponization of space, they did not have an expressed opinion on the shield.
2003 invasion of Iraq: the Conservatives supported the United States over Iraq, while the other parties generally opposed it.
Gun registry: The Conservatives strongly opposed the gun registry while the other parties support it.
Marijuana: The Liberals have introduced measures to decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana, a move generally supported by the other opposition parties. The Conservative Party opposes such legislation. The Bloc Québécois is more explicit in its support for decriminalisation, while the NDP wishes to study the issue and consider going beyond mere decriminalisation.
Ontario budget: The introduction by the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty of "Ontario Health Premiums" was very unpopular, despite Mr. McGuinty's claim that this new tax was necessary because of the budgetary deficit left by the previous Progressive Conservative government. The Conservatives and the NDP capitalized on this and other unpopular fiscal and tax-related policy to attack the Liberals at the federal level.

Timeline

See Timeline of the Canadian federal election, 2004

Leadership races of 2003 and 2004

Poll results

See Opinion polling for the 2004 Canadian election

External links

CBC - Canada Votes (includes video files of the whole English debate)
CTV - Election 2004
SRC - Élections (in French, includes video files of the whole French debate)
Cyberpresse - Élections fédérales 2004 (in French, including a regularly updated vote intention graph)
Elections Canada
Elections Canada official numbers
CBC

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