Canadian federal election, 1972

Canadian federal election, 1972
	← outgoing members elected members →
264 seats in the 29th Canadian Parliament ; 133 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	76.7% [1] (1.0pp)
	Popular vote by province, with graphs indicating the number of seats won. As this is an FPTP election, seat totals are not determined by popular vote by province but instead via results by each riding.
Prime Minister before election; Pierre Trudeau ; Liberal	Prime Minister-designate; Pierre Trudeau ; Liberal

Last updated March 17, 2019

The Canadian federal election of 1972 was held on October 30, 1972, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 29th Parliament of Canada. It resulted in a slim victory for the governing Liberal Party, which won 109 seats, compared to 107 seats for the opposition Progressive Conservatives. A further 48 seats were won by other parties and independents. On election night, the results appeared to give 109 seats to the Tories, but once the counting had finished the next day, the final results gave the Liberals a minority government and left the New Democratic Party led by David Lewis holding the balance of power. See 29th Canadian parliament for a full list of MPs elected.

The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons currently meets in a temporary Commons chamber in the West Block of the parliament buildings on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, while the Centre Block, which houses the traditional Commons chamber, undergoes a ten-year renovation.

The 29th Canadian Parliament was in session from January 4, 1973, until May 9, 1974. The membership was set by the 1972 federal election on October 30, 1972, and it was dissolved prior to the 1974 election.

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra. Consequently, its population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies widely across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.

Overview

The election was the second fought by Liberal leader, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The Liberals entered the election high in the polls, but the spirit of Trudeaumania had worn off, and a slumping economy hurt his party. The Tories were led by Robert Stanfield, the former premier of Nova Scotia, who had an honest but bumbling image. The Tories tried to capitalize on the public's perception that the Liberals were mismanaging the economy with the slogan, "A Progressive Conservative government will do better."

The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and Canada's head of government. The current, and 23rd, Prime Minister of Canada is the Liberal Party's Justin Trudeau, following the 2015 Canadian federal election. Canadian prime ministers are styled as The Right Honourable, a privilege maintained for life.

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, often referred to by the initials PET, was a Canadian statesman who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada. He was the third longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history, having served for 15 years, 164 days.

Trudeaumania was the nickname given in early 1968 to the excitement generated by Pierre Trudeau's entry into the leadership race of the Liberal Party of Canada. Trudeaumania continued during the subsequent federal election campaign and during Trudeau's early years as Prime Minister of Canada. Decades later, Trudeau's son, Justin Trudeau, drew a similar international reaction when he became Prime Minister himself in 2015.

The Liberals campaigned on the slogan, "The Land is Strong", and television ads illustrating Canada's scenery. The slogan quickly became much derided, and the party had developed few real issues to campaign on. As a result, their entire campaign was viewed as being one of the worst managed in recent decades.

Party platforms

Liberal Party:

increase bilingualism in the civil service;
re-introduce a bill controlling foreign take-overs of Canadian businesses;
specialized programs to reduce unemployment;
a program to expand and create new parks across Canada, including Toronto's "Harbourfront" and Mount Ste.-Anne Park near Quebec City;
make-work programs to create jobs;
reduce abuse of Unemployment Insurance; and
incentives to reduce pollution.

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Quebec City, officially Québec, is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. The city had a population estimate of 531,902 in July 2016, and the metropolitan area had a population of 800,296 in July 2016, making it the second largest city in Quebec after Montreal, and the seventh largest metropolitan area and eleventh largest city in the country.

Progressive Conservative Party:

increase the discipline in government spending, and increase the power of the Auditor General to fight waste and inefficiency in government;
ban strikes in essential services;
introduce price and wage controls if necessary to control inflation;
require foreign-owned companies operating in Canada to have a majority of Canadians on their boards of directors;
introduce an incentive to encourage Canadians to invest in small businesses;
develop a national economic strategy in co-operation with the provincial governments;
expand re-training opportunities for unemployed workers;
adjust tariffs to encourage secondary processing in Canada of Canada's natural resources;
eliminate the 11% sales tax on building materials;
eliminate 3% increase in personal income tax rates scheduled for January 1, 1973, and reduce rates by 4% on July 1, 1973;
adjust old age security payments regularly to reflect changes in the cost of living;
index tax brackets to inflation so that taxes do not rise as the cost of living rises;
provide assistance to set up residential land banks to reduce the cost of housing.

New Democratic Party:

eliminate 3% increase in personal income tax rates scheduled for January 1, 1973, and reduce rates by 8% for ordinary Canadians;
introduce controls on prices and rents, but not on wages;
create a $4300 million program to fund public works during winter months to reduce unemployment;
increase old age security payments, but eliminate them for wealthy senior citizens;
legislate greater autonomy for Canadian trade unions that are branches of international unions;
tough tax laws for corporations;
eliminate "corporate welfare", i.e., grants and subsidies for corporations, and use this money to build housing and transportation infrastructure, and fund municipal services to create jobs.

Social Credit Party:

reform the monetary system in line with social credit theories;
increase old age security payments to $200 per month beginning at age 60, and to $150 per month for spouses of seniors regardless of age.

Social credit is an interdisciplinary and distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer who published a book by that name in 1924. It encompasses economics, political science, history, and accounting. Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic." Douglas said that Social Crediters want to build a new civilization based upon "absolute economic security" for the individual, where "they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid." In his words, "what we really demand of existence is not that we shall be put into somebody else's Utopia, but we shall be put in a position to construct a Utopia of our own."

National results

The voter turn-out was 76.7%.

One independent candidate was elected: Roch LaSalle was re-elected in his Quebec riding. LaSalle had left the PC caucus to protest the party's failure to recognize Quebec's right to self-determination, and was the only candidate to win the support of the separatist Parti Québécois .

The Quebec sovereignty movement is a political movement as well as an ideology of values, concepts and ideas that advocates independence for the Canadian province of Quebec.

The Parti Québécois is a sovereignist and social democratic provincial political party in Quebec, Canada. The PQ advocates national sovereignty for Quebec involving independence of the province of Quebec from Canada and establishing a sovereign state. The PQ has also promoted the possibility of maintaining a loose political and economic sovereignty-association between Quebec and Canada. The party traditionally has support from the labour movement, but unlike most other social democratic parties, its ties with organized labour are informal. Members and supporters of the PQ are called "péquistes", a French word derived from the pronunciation of the party's initials.

One candidate with no affiliation was elected: Lucien Lamoureux, in the Ontario riding of Stomont-Dundas-Glengarry. Lamoureux, originally elected as a Liberal, had been serving as Speaker of the House of Commons. He ran without affiliation in order to preserve his impartiality as Speaker. He retired after this Parliament, and did not run in the 1974 election.

Lucien Lamoureux, was a Canadian politician and Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada from 1966 to 1974. He is the second longest-serving occupant of that office.

Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.

The speaker of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body, is its presiding officer, or the chair. The title was first used in 1377 in England.

The Liberals won a minority government, with the New Democratic Party led by David Lewis holding the balance of power. Despite having won both the popular vote and the most seats in every province and territory except for Quebec, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, the Tories were ultimately kept out of power by their continued inability to make any headway into Quebec, as well as a failure to more decisively win in Ontario, where the Liberals finished a close second.

Requiring NDP support to continue, the government would move to the political left, including the creation of Petro-Canada.

↓
109	107	31	15	2
Liberal	Progressive Conservative	NDP	SC	O

Party		Party leader	# of candidates	Seats				Popular vote
Party		Party leader	# of candidates	1968	Dissolution	Elected	% Change	#	%	Change
	Liberal	Pierre Trudeau	263	155	147	109	-29.7%	3,717,804	38.42%	-6.95pp
	Progressive Conservative	Robert Stanfield	264	72	73	107	+48.6%	3,388,980	35.02%	+3.59pp
	New Democratic Party	David Lewis	252	22	25	31	+40.9%	1,725,719	17.83%	+0.87pp
	Social Credit ¹	Real Caouette	164	14	15	15	+7.1%	730,759	7.55%	+2.27pp
	Independent²		53	1	2	1	-	56,685	0.59%	+0.14pp
	No affiliation³		26			1		23,938	0.25%
	Unknown		93			-		32,013	0.33%
	Rhinoceros ⁴	Cornelius I	1	-	-	-	-	1,565	0.02%	+0.02pp
	Vacant				4
	Total		1,117	264	264	264	-0.4%	9,677,463	100%
Sources: Elections Canada;History of Federal Ridings since 1867; Toronto Star, October 30, 1972

Notes:

"% change" refers to change from previous election

¹ Indicates increase from total Social Credit + Ralliement creditiste seats/vote in 1968.

² Roch LaSalle, who was elected in 1968 as a Progressive Conservative, won re-election as an independent.

³ Lucien Lamoureux who was elected as a Liberal but served as Speaker of the House, won re-election with no party affiliation.

⁴ The Rhinoceros Party ran a total of 12 candidates, but because it was not recognized by Elections Canada as a registered party, its candidates were listed as independents.

Vote and seat summaries

Popular vote

Liberal			38.42%
PC			35.02%
NDP			17.83%
Social Credit			7.55%
Others			1.18%

Seat totals

Liberal			41.29%
PC			40.53%
NDP			11.74%
Social Credit			5.68%
Independents			0.76%

Results by province

Party name			BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	NT	YK	Total
	Liberal	Seats:	4	-	1	2	36	56	5	1	1	3	-	-	109
	Liberal	Popular Vote:	28.9	25.0	25.3	30.9	38.2	48.9	43.1	33.9	40.5	44.8	29.3	32.2	38.4
	Progressive Conservative	Seats:	8	19	7	8	40	2	5	10	3	4	-	1	107
	Progressive Conservative	Vote:	33.0	57.6	36.9	41.6	39.1	17.4	46.8	53.4	51.9	49.0	30.9	53.0	35.0
	New Democratic Party	Seats:	11	-	5	3	11	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	31
	New Democratic Party	Vote:	35.0	12.6	35.9	26.3	21.5	6.8	6.3	12.3	7.5	4.7	39.8	11.6	17.8
	Social Credit	Seats:	-	-	-	-	-	15	-	-	-	-			15
	Social Credit	Vote:	2.6	4.5	1.8	0.7	0.4	24.3	3.2	0.3	0.1	0.2			7.6
	Independent	Seats:	-	-	-	-	-	1	-			-		-	1
	Independent	Vote:	0.2	xx	xx	0.1	0.2	1.7	0.3			0.4		3.1	0.6
	No affiliation	Seats:	-	-	-	-	1	-		-					1
	No affiliation	Vote:	xx	0.1	xx	xx	0.5	0.2		xx					0.2
Total seats:			23	19	13	13	88	74	10	11	4	7	1	1	264
Parties that won no seats:
	Unknown	Vote:	0.1	0.2	0.1	0.3	0.1	0.7	0.4	0.1		0.9			0.3
	Rhinoceros	Vote:						0.1							xx

xx - less than 0.05% of the popular vote

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References

↑ Pomfret, R. "Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums". Elections Canada. Elections Canada. Retrieved 11 January 2014.

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[1] Pomfret, R. "Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums". Elections Canada. Elections Canada. Retrieved 11 January 2014.

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