ABSTRACT
The Canadian party system has experienced significant flux in recent years. In the 1993 federal election, the governing Progressive Conservatives (PCs) were reduced to just two seats in the House of Commons. This led to a decade of contestation on the right between the PCs and the upstart Reform Party. At the same time, a new force, the Bloc Québécois, emerged within the province of Quebec and succeeded in winning most of the province’s federal seats in six successive elections (from 1993 to 2008). With the Bloc dominating Quebec, Reform winning most seats in Western Canada and the Liberals sweeping Ontario, there was a strong regional cast to party politics in this era (Cross 2002). With their vote shares spread inefficiently across the country, the PCs and the left-of-centre New Democratic Party (NDP) suffered significant loss of seats and found themselves struggling for survival (Carty et al. 2000).
