Pivot or Pirouette?

The results of the 1993 federal election were unprecedented: the governing party was reduced to two seats, a separatist party became the official opposition, and a new regional party swept the West. Pivot or Pirouette? covers both the backstory and the aftermath of the election, as told by an insider who was involved in the events before, during, and after the ballots were cast. Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives had won two majority governments in the 1980s but his grand coalition of Québécois, Western, and traditional Tory voters fell apart under the stress of constitutional politics. Party leaders Lucien Bouchard and Preston Manning moved in to recruit discontented voters to their new regional parties, and Conservatives’ attempts to resurrect their failing fortunes by choosing Kim Campbell as the first female prime minister were too little, too late. Although the shocking results seemed pivotal, ultimately the pivot turned into a full pirouette as Canadian politics returned to historical norms. This lively book demonstrates that 1993 was part of the longstanding pattern of Canadian politics – punctuated equilibrium – in which new parties shake up the system but are eventually absorbed into it, bringing innovation but not transformation. You can’t understand modern Canadian politics without understanding the 1993 federal election, in many ways the strangest in the country’s history.