Independent candidates, 1993 Canadian federal election

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There were several independent candidates in the 1993 Canadian federal election, some of whom were associated with unregistered parties and some of whom were not. One independent candidate, Gilles Bernier of Beauce, was elected. Information about other independent candidates may be found here.

Contents 1 Alberta 1.1 Miel S.R. Gabriel (Calgary Southwest) 2 Ontario 2.1 David Talbot (Ottawa—Vanier) 3 Footnotes

[edit] Alberta

[edit] Miel S.R. Gabriel (Calgary Southwest)

Gabriel was a civil engineer, and owned a catering business.^[1] He also formed the nationalist group "Canada in a New Century" in 1992 to oppose the Charlottetown Accord, and unsuccessfully sought the Reform Party nomination for Calgary Northeast in the same year.^[2] He was forty-four years old in 1993.

He campaigned for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the 1993 provincial election, running as an independent candidate against Premier Ralph Klein. His candidacy centred around a "contract" which he encouraged all MLAs to sign, promising cuts to government expenditures and to the salaries and pensions of elected officials. Signatories were also pledged to resign if they violated the terms of the agreement. It does not appear that any elected officials chose to sign the contract ^[3]

Gabriel campaigned for the Calgary City Council later in 1993, and finished last in a field of twenty-three candidates. He finished eighth out of nine candidates in Calgary Southwest in the 1993 federal election, losing to Reform Party leader Preston Manning.

He later challenged Al Duerr for Mayor of Calgary in 1995, promising to take a 50% pay cut in his first year and to encourage more popular participation in government.^[4] By this time, he had changed the name of his political advocacy organization to the Canada Mother Empire Strategic Institute.^[5] He refused to use campaign signs in this election, commenting "I'll have no election signs on the streets. Pollution is not part of my religion".^[6] He also called for the city to distribute money to companies on the condition that it be used to create jobs.^[7]

Electoral record

Election	Division	Party	Votes	%	Place	Winner
1993 provincial	Calgary Elbow	Ind.	101		5/6	Ralph Klein, Progressive Conservative
Calgary municipal by-election, 20 September 1993	Council Ward 5	-	11		23/23	Ray Jones
1993 federal	Calgary Southwest	-	57	0.08	8/9	Preston Manning, Reform
1995 Calgary municipal	Mayor	-	1,137		5/7	Al Duerr

The 1993 municipal results are taken from the Calgary Herald, 21 September 1993, B1, and the 1995 results are taken from the Calgary Herald, 17 October 1995, A1. Italicized numbers are unofficial.

[edit] Ontario

[edit] David Talbot (Ottawa—Vanier)

Talbot was a twenty-year-old university student at the time of the election. He served as a parliamentary page in 1992-93, and chose to campaign for office after seeing parliamentarians vote the party line on issues they knew nothing about. He printed a number of t-shirts for the campaign, which read "Listen to the voice of youth" (Ottawa Citizen, 19 October 1993). Talbot received 445 votes (0.92%), finishing seventh against Liberal incumbent Jean-Robert Gauthier. He returned to his studies at the University of Ottawa after the campaign (Ottawa Citizen, 24 June 1994), and was an organizer for the Students' Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) (Citizen, 22 November 1994).

Talbot subsequently joined the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, and campaigned for the party's nomination for a 1995 by-election in Ottawa—Vanier. He lost to Francoise Guenette (Citizen, 15 February 1995). He later worked as a communications specialist for party leader Jean Charest (Citizen, 12 March 1998) and a press aide for Charest's interim successor, Elsie Wayne (Montreal Gazette, 8 August 1998).

[edit] Footnotes