Martin played a major role in drafting policy during the 1993 federal election. The leaders debates were held October 3 and 4, and were generally regarded as inconclusive, with no party gaining a boost from them. The 41st Canadian federal election was held on May 2, 2011.

Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives won the majority of seats in Ontario for the first time since 1988. Although they won handily, that campaign effectively reduced the Grits to an Ontario party with a few regional add-ons. The Reform Party won nearly as many seats and replaced the PCs as the major right-wing party in the Commons, although it won only one seat east of Manitoba. However, this momentum did not last, and the Progressive Conservatives suffered the most lopsided defeat for a Canadian governing party at the federal level, and among the worst ever suffered by a governing party in the Western world, losing more than half their vote from 1988 and all but two of their 156 seats. However, the Bloc's concentration of support in Quebec was slightly larger, leaving Reform three seats short of making Manning Leader of the Opposition. The Green Party of Canada Chief Agent Greg Vezina organized a debate between the leaders of seven of the minor parties on October 5, which was broadcast on CBC Newsworld and CPAC. Many Western voters had never forgiven the Liberals for the National Energy Program in the 1980s, and Mulroney's attempt to pacify Quebec caused them to rethink their support for the Tories. The election saw three minor parties focused on radical reform to the monetary system: the Canada Party, the Abolitionist Party, and the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada, which was formed by supporters of U.S. fringe politician Lyndon LaRouche. They had amassed a substantial campaign war chest, almost as large as that of the Tories. In both the 1993 election and the 2000 election, Greg Vezina working as an independent producer, the Green Party and the Natural Law Party of Canada organized All Party Leaders' Debates which invited the leaders of all registered and accredited parties to participate.

Some Reformers had been annoyed that the moderate former Liberal and Ottawa insider had been made campaign manager, but he quickly proved highly able. Reform had a major breakthrough, gaining a substantial portion of the Tories' previous support in the West. This election, like all previous Canadian elections, was conducted under a single-member plurality (or first past the post) system in which the country was carved into 295 electoral districts, or ridings, with each one electing one representative to the House of Commons. In 2006, the Conservatives became the Government, the Liberals relegated to official opposition, while the NDP and Bloc retained a significant opposition presence. The only other Progressive Conservative besides Charest to win a Commons seat was Elsie Wayne, the popular mayor of Saint John, New Brunswick. The Bloc won 54 seats, capturing just under half the vote in Quebec and nearly sweeping the francophone ridings there. The party sits at the centre-right to the right-wing of the Canadian political spectrum, with the Liberal Party of Canada positioned centre to centre-left. These factors combined to make Mulroney the least popular leader since opinion polling began in the 1940s. In 2003, the Canadian Alliance under Stephen Harper and the Progressive Conservatives under Peter MacKay merged, creating the Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada, colloquially known as the Tories, is a federal political party in Canada. Campbell briefly changed the party's name to the "Christian Freedom Party" in an attempt to appeal to social conservatives. The party had been in headlong decline since losing its last Member of Parliament in 1980, and was now led by fundamentalist Christian preacher Ken Campbell. The French debates were held on the first night. Campbell enjoyed a brief period of high popularity upon being sworn in, becoming the eponym of "Campbellmania," just as Pierre Trudeau had been the subject of late-1960s Trudeaumania. ", Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement, Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist), Learn how and when to remove this template message, List of Canadian federal general elections, "Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums", Cognitive assimilation-contrast effects among partisan identifiers: An analysis of the 1993 Canadian national election, "2015 election campaign is eerily similar to the 1993 race", "1993 Canadian Federal Election Results (Detail)", Markets as Predictors of Election Outcomes: Campaign Events and Judgement Bias in the 1993 UBC Election Stock Market.