Vote Overhauls Canada Politics : Election: Liberal Party wins a majority and the Bloc Quebecois leads for second place. Astonishing rebuke to ruling Conservatives threatens status as a party.

Canadians went to the polls Monday and drastically redrew their country’s political map, throwing out Prime Minister Kim Campbell and electing a majority Liberal Party government led by Jean Chretien, a 59-year-old French-speaking lawyer from Quebec.

Voters delivered an astonishing rebuke to the Progressive Conservative Party, which has governed since 1984, first under Brian Mulroney and for the last five months under Campbell. Throughout their tenure the Tories have stood for hard-right economic conservativism, cuts in social spending, a new value-added tax and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Tories finished a humiliating fifth out of five major parties, holding onto just two of 296 seats in the House of Commons, as the final votes were still being counted.

That was not even enough to maintain their official status as a party under Canadian parliamentary rules. No party in Canadian history has lost as many seats in a single election.

With the vote still being counted late Monday evening, Campbell conceded defeat in her own Vancouver district, or riding.

“I accept the judgment of the Canadian people,” she said with a rueful smile, calling for a time of “renewal and rebuilding.”

At the same time they were grinding the Tories under their heels, many Canadian voters were flirting with two formerly small, strongly ideological, regionally rooted parties.

The Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party did well in Quebec and Alberta respectively, both provinces that were previously Tory strongholds in federal politics.

With the votes still being counted, the Bloc Quebecois had won at least 54 seats, all of them in Quebec, and appeared to be moving toward a second-place showing nationwide--enough to form the official opposition in the House of Commons.

As “Her Majesty’s loyal opposition,” the Bloc would have the right to an official residence in Ottawa, a research staff, special financing and other perks. And it would have the privilege of opening each day’s debate on the floor of the House of Commons.

That means Bloc leader Lucien Bouchard would be able to inject each day’s parliamentary question-and-answer period with the question of special powers for Quebec--a subject that sets many English Canadians’ teeth on edge.

Never before have Quebec separatists achieved such power at a federal level in Canada, and analysts are at a loss to predict how they will behave.

Bouchard, a popular and charismatic lawyer from the Lac St.-Jean region, a separatist bastion, said in his victory speech that he knew many Quebeckers had voted for his Bloc Quebecois as a way of punishing traditional politicians, and not because they desired Quebec’s independence. He promised such voters that his immediate goal was to defend the interests of Quebec in Ottawa--and not necessarily to secede from Canada.

“It is high time that the voice of Quebec is heard (in Ottawa), in order to correct the inequities of this political order,” he said.

Meanwhile, with the votes from Western Canada still being counted, the Reform Party had won 35 seats outright, for a strong third-place finish, and was leading in as many as 18 more--enough to give the Bloc Quebecois a run for its money.

The Reform Party, led by Preston Manning, the plain-spoken son of a former Alberta radio-preacher-turned-politician and popular provincial premier, campaigned on a platform of deep federal budget cuts, a reduction in the number of immigrants admitted into Canada, and a Canada-take-it-or-leave-it approach to Quebec independantistes.

“We do not intend to conduct ourselves as a traditional opposition party,” Manning told cheering supporters in his speech.

On a workaday level, it matters little how numerous the opposition parties are and what they do next.

A party that can form a majority government in Canada has tremendous power--and the Liberals have a solid majority.

Since parties in Canada are expected to vote unanimously on virtually all bills, the Liberals can be expect to get most of their legislation passed.

Chretien, a small-town lawyer who speaks English with a pronounced French-Canadian accent complicated by a partial facial paralysis with him since birth, stands for a centrist set of policies including job creation through public works, gentle budget cuts and a looser monetary policy.

“We have a very clear mandate to work on job creation and to restore the economy,” he said in his victory speech.

Chretien also promised during his campaign to work for revisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement, although the changes he seeks are not likely to be extensive.

Although he is from Quebec, Chretien is a strong federalist who has openly ridiculed those who would make Quebec a separate state. His federalist stance had much to do with his party’s weak showing in Quebec. It got less than one seat for every two won by the Bloc.

The Liberals more than made up for their problems in Quebec with a clean sweep in huge Ontario, which has 99 seats. Many in Ontario voted Liberal because they were frightened by the radical Reform Party.

Walsh reported from Toronto and Turner from Shawinigan, Quebec.