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Sponsorship Scandal: Liberal Canada

Wilfrid Laurier Dept: Liberal Canada lasted a long time, from the election of Wilfrid Laurier in 1896 to Pierre Trudeau’s departure in 1984. A recovery ensued under Jean Chretien for almost a decade starting in 1993, but the conservative forces were foolishly divided in those years and the Liberals themselves were corrosively split into two factions that time eventually made devastatingly public in the sponsorship scandal, according to Globe And Mail. The Liberals have not won a majority of Quebec’s seats in a general election since 1980, and now they’re reduced to a shrunken harvest of largely non-francophone voters. They are the party, honourably, that stands for a strong central government in a province that doesn’t want one and now, peering into the electoral abyss at the end of a campaign Mr. Ignatieff and his party so resolutely sought, Liberals might be witnessing their own “strange death,” or at least a new stage of political deterioration that spells the end of Liberal Canada. Liberal Canada’s singular contribution had been to keep French Quebeckers and other Canadians united in one country. In retrospect, the 1981-1982 patriation of the Constitution, engineered brilliantly by Mr. Trudeau, weakened that bridge by turning many francophones away from the Liberals. In reinforcing a country, he lost a large part of a province for his party. As reported in the news.
@t globe and mail, political deterioration