Jack Mulroney and another Reckless Coalition

Jack Layton is looking for power. He will do anything to potentially become Prime Minister, and feels justified in lies and reckless campaigning because he feels the most vunerable Canadians will be better off if he succeeds. Sorry Jack, it's been done and the country is not better off as a result. In 1988 Canadians went to the polls to what would be unbeknownst at the time, but the last election with the 2 1/2 party system. Four years earlier Brian Mulroney couldn't be content with a comfortable majority, he literally thought he could make the PCs the naturally governing party and ran two campaigns, one appealing to western populists and the other to nationalist Quebecers. The result was the largest seat total in Canadian history. He wasn't done. In order to stick it to his predecessor, Pierre Trudeau, he sought to succeed where Trudeau had failed, by bringing Quebec into the Constitution. The result was the Meech Lake Accord in 1987. This odd couple would stay together through the next campaign as Mulroney swept Alberta and maintained a comfortable plurality in Quebec to become the second Progressive Conservative Leader to form two consecutive majority governments despite dropping in every other section of the country. The ink wasn't dry Chief Electoral Officer's sanctioning of the 1988 results when this marriage went straight to divorce court. An upstart movement called the Reform Party led by Preston Manning, son of former Alberta Premier Ernest Manning was formed on the eve the 1988 vote in protest to the Mulroney Government's obession with Quebec. After finishing second in several ridings in Alberta in 1988, they shocked the world by winning a by-election in 1989. This would give them the clout required to fight the next election. Things were not all so rosey in La Belle Province. The Meech Lake Accord was ready to die a slow death as the 80's turned into the 90's. Well known separatist,Mulroney confidant and futue Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard would abruptly resign from the Mulroney Goverment over protest to concessions made in the accord from another future Quebec Premier, Jean Charest. All it would take was the wave of an eagle feather in the Manitoba Legislature and the accord was dead. The result, a $300 million egofest for Mulroney to salvage his tatered place in Canadian history called the Charlottetown Accord, followed by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada being moved into a vegetative state until its death in 2003, a western protest movement whose solidiers would eventually come to power in Canada in 2006 on lies and slander, then destroy the very fabric of this country, a resurgence of separatist movement in Quebec with a referendum in 1995 that nearly broke up the country. So Mr. Layton, you want play both sides of the coin to gain more seats and possibly come to power. History has taught that more seats and power can come at a cost.