If it was so unpopular, and the Liberals were so pissed that Mulrooney appointed 8 extra Senators to make a Conservative majority in the Senate in order to get the GST passed, why did the Liberals never manage to get rid of it like they promised?
Because they're stinkin' liars!!! They were totally capable of getting rid of it since they had a huge majority in the House.
Well, to put it less subjectively, Canada was facing a huge tsunami of red ink at the time, so it made sense to cutback and increase revenue. At the end we now have a big budget surplus and much of the public debt has been paid.
Many things. By 93 Mulroney had become unpopular for raising the GST, the state of the economy, his arrogance, and his cozing up to Reagan's White House. Knowing that an election had to come in 93 the PC made Kim Campbell their new leader and for a while she was popular for being a fresh face and the first woman leader of Canada.
During the campaign, she screwed up BIG TIME. She was soon seen as a protege of Mulroney and too inexperienced having only served at one cabnet post, then came several gaffes (e.g. at the debate she said an election is not the time to talk about the issues), and finally, when everything looked bad for her, she made a TV ad criticising how Chretien's face looked ugly and how he wouldn't represent Canada well.
That was the final blow for her. Everyone knew the PC was going to be squashed, but no one thought about them only having two seats on election night!!
[/quote]
