Charlottetown Accord - Aftermath

Aftermath

The impact of the referendum caused the Canadian Press to label it the Canadian Newsmaker of the Year, an honour that usually goes to individual people. CBC claimed that this was the first time that the "country's newsrooms have selected a symbol instead of a specific person", which would be done again in 2006 and 2007.

Many thought, from a perspective favouring national unity, that the result given was probably the next-best result to the Accord passing: since both Quebec and English Canada rejected it, there really was not a fundamental disagreement as there was with the Meech Lake Accord. A division in the Quebec Liberal Party over the accord would bring former Liberal youth committee president Mario Dumont to form the Action démocratique du Québec in 1994.

Probably the biggest result of the referendum, however, was the effect of most of Canada's population voting against an agreement endorsed by every first minister and most other political groups. This stinging rebuke against the "political class" in Canada was a preview of things to come — in the federal election on October 25, 1993, a year less a day after the Charlottetown referendum, the Progressive Conservatives under new leader and prime minister Kim Campbell were reduced to two seats. They were replaced in most Western ridings by the Reform Party and in Quebec by the Bloc Québécois, the parties who had opposed the Accord. The NDP was also decimated, winning just nine seats, as the party's pro-Charlottetown stance alienated many Prairie voters who turned to Reform as the new party of Western protest. The Liberals, despite their support for the accord, had new leader in Jean Chrétien, who opposed it, and won a large majority in the new Parliament due to their near-sweep of Ontario. There, only a minority of the voters who had opposed the accord were willing to vote for the Reform Party.

One of the Accord's reforms dealing specifically with New Brunswick was successfully enacted in 1993 as section 16.1 of the Charter of Rights.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several matters relating to the status of Quebec have been pursued through Parliament (e.g., the Clarity Act) or through intergovernmental agreements. In 2006 the House of Commons of Canada passed the Québécois nation motion, recognizing francophone Quebecers as a nation within a united Canada. As of 2011 there have been no further attempts to resolve the status of Quebec through a formal constitutional process, although former Quebec opposition leader Mario Dumont has stated his support for reopening the constitutional debate.