Editing Pierre Trudeau (section)

=== Resignation ===
By 1984, the Progressive Conservatives held a substantial lead in opinion polls under their new leader [[Brian Mulroney]], and polls indicated that the Liberals faced all-but-certain defeat if Trudeau led them into the next election.

On February 29, 1984, a day after what he described as a walk through the snowy streets of Ottawa, Trudeau announced he would not lead the Liberals into the next election. He was frequently known to use the term "walk in the snow" as a trope; he claimed to have taken a similar walk in December 1979 before deciding to take the Liberals into the 1980 election.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/trudeaus-third-walk-in-the-snow/|title=Trudeau's third walk in the snow|publisher=[[Ottawa Citizen]]|date=February 27, 2014|access-date=April 24, 2020|archive-date=August 6, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806085725/https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/trudeaus-third-walk-in-the-snow/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Trudeau formally retired on June 30, ending his 15-year tenure as prime minister. He was succeeded by John Turner, a former [[Cabinet of Canada|Cabinet minister]] under both Trudeau and Lester Pearson. Before handing power to Turner, Trudeau took the unusual step of appointing Liberal [[Senate of Canada|Senators]] from Western provinces to his Cabinet. He advised [[Governor General of Canada|Governor General]] [[Jeanne Sauvé]] to appoint over 200 Liberals to [[patronage]] positions. He and Turner then crafted a legal agreement calling for Turner to advise an additional 70 patronage appointments. The sheer volume of appointments, combined with questions about the appointees' qualifications, led to condemnation from across the political spectrum.<ref name="Mulroney 1991">''Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition'', by [[John Sawatsky]], Toronto 1991, McFarlane, Walter, and Ross publishers.</ref> However, an apparent rebound in the polls prompted Turner to call [[1984 Canadian federal election|an election for September 1984]].

Turner's appointment deal with Trudeau came back to haunt the Liberals at the English-language debate, when Mulroney demanded that Turner apologize for not advising that the appointments be cancelled—advice that Sauvé would have been required to follow by convention. Turner claimed that "I had no option" but to let the appointments stand, prompting Mulroney to tell him, "[[You had an option, sir]]–to say 'no'–and you chose to say 'yes' to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cbc.ca/archives/|title=CBC Archives|website=www.cbc.ca|access-date=April 24, 2020|archive-date=January 11, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190111045125/https://www.cbc.ca/archives|url-status=live}}</ref> (Mulroney himself soon engaged in his own series of patronage appointments.)<ref>{{cite web |url=https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/is-patronage-the-oil-that-keeps-our-democracy-turning |title=Is patronage the oil that keeps our democracy turning? |work=National Post |date=June 1, 2012 |access-date=December 24, 2024}}</ref>

In the [[1984 Canadian federal election|election]], Mulroney's PCs took slightly more than half the votes cast and 73 percent of the seats,  winning the largest majority government (by total number of seats) and second-largest majority (by proportion of seats) in Canadian history. The Liberals, with Turner as leader, lost 95 seats – at the time, the worst defeat of a sitting government at the federal level (by proportion of seats).