Liberal leader John Turner and Conservative leader Brian Mulroney spar during a 1988 election campaign debate.FRED CHARTRAND/The Canadian Press
No two federal elections are ever exactly alike. But similarities do abound between the most consequential votes in Canadian history. And the election of 2025 is shaping up to be a battle for the country’s soul not unlike two legendary campaigns of the past.
It is not yet clear whether the 2025 campaign will end up being more like 1984 or 1988. But anyone who remembers those two elections can surely recognize the features they share with the current contest.
In 1984, an unelected Liberal leader became prime minister after the departure of a deeply unpopular Trudeau, and called a snap election to capitalize on a sudden surge in Grit support. But ultimately, a politically rusty John Turner could not overcome a pent-up voter desire for change, and the brash style of a newish Progressive Conservative leader who fed off resentment in Western Canada and Quebec toward the Liberals. In the end, Brian Mulroney’s PCs won the biggest majority in Canadian parliamentary history.
By 1988, Mr. Mulroney headed an unpopular government that had trailed Mr. Turner’s Liberals (and, briefly, Ed Broadbent’s New Democratic Party) in the polls before sealing a historic free-trade agreement with the United States. Overnight, Canada’s relationship with its southern neighbour became the ballot question of the 1988 election; Canadians were asked to choose between Mr. Mulroney’s continental vision and Mr. Turner’s nationalist credo. In the end, a plurality backed free markets over protectionism.
As in 1984, the 2025 campaign begins with the Liberal Party surging out of the starting gates, erasing the massive Tory lead that, until recently, had most pollsters predicting game over for the Grits. Justin Trudeau’s resignation, catapulting the unelected Mark Carney into the Liberal leadership position and Prime Minister’s job, has thrust the party back into first place in the polls under a Leader with serious economic cred.
It’s just like when Mr. Turner, a Bay Street lawyer who had long been seen as a potential prime-minister-in-waiting, took over the Liberal Party from Pierre Trudeau in 1984. The Grits rebounded spectacularly in the polls and, by the time Mr. Turner called an election barely a week after being sworn in as prime minister, the Liberals held a 10-percentage-point lead over the Tories. Mr. Mulroney, who brought a populist and combative style to Canadian politics, suddenly looked flatfooted.
Like Mr. Carney, who cancelled Justin Trudeau’s consumer-carbon tax and capital-gains tax hike, Mr. Turner sought to distance himself from the Pierre Trudeau era. “He tried to detach himself from the events of the past and to direct the attention of the voters to the future,” Allan Frizzell and Anthony Westell wrote in a post-election analysis. “But the [Liberal] record was surely in the minds of the voters when they went to the polls in 1984.”
For his part, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson summed up the contest this way: “What had been perceived as a scarcely vincible [Liberal] party was revealed in the campaign to have been a magnificent illusion, a party short of money, organization, effective leadership, ideas and ultimately of votes.”
When Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Turner faced off again in 1988, Canada-U.S. relations were top of mind. The Liberals accused Mr. Mulroney of being infatuated with then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan and his neoliberal policies. Mr. Turner vowed to scrap the free-trade agreement, which he insisted would reduce Canada “to a colony of the United States.”
That debate line, which gave the Liberals a short-lived bounce in the polls, recalls the barb Mr. Carney made at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre earlier this month: “A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”
Canadians rejected Mr. Turner’s implicit attacks on Mr. Mulroney’s patriotism in 1988. It is not clear if Mr. Carney’s jabs at Mr. Poilievre will turn out to be a winning formula for the Liberals now. Voter frustration over the cost of living and housing affordability – which propelled the Tories into first place in the polls last year – could come back to haunt the Liberals.
Then there is the gaffe factor. Mr. Turner stumbled repeatedly on the campaign trail in 1984. Mr. Carney this week confused the name of a Liberal candidate in Quebec and the location of the mass shooting she survived in 1989 with another that took place in 1992. His weak French has proved to be a handicap, and he has often shown impatience with journalists. And there are still four weeks to go before election day.
In 1984 and 1988, the leaders’ debates mattered – big time. That is also likely to be the case in 2025, in both official languages. After all, the stakes in this election could hardly be higher. Get ready for a battle royale.