Federal Politics
Drainville resigned from the legislature on September 27, 1993, and declared himself an independent candidate in the 1993 federal election. He finished a distant fourth against Liberal John O'Reilly in the federal Victoria—Haliburton riding, though he did outpoll the official NDP candidate by over a thousand votes.
Drainville later realigned himself with the federal NDP, and worked within the Quebec wing. He ran as an official NDP candidate in the 1997 election in the Quebec riding of Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, but again finished a distant fourth with only 649 votes. Until the election of 2011when the NDP won 58 seats in the province of Quebec, the NDP had been relatively weak in the province because of the power of the Bloc Québécois, and such a finish was not uncommon. Despite losing the election, he continued to speak and write publicly about social issues and electoral reform.
Read more about this topic: Dennis Drainville
Famous quotes containing the words federal and/or politics:
“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)