The 1993 election was just over a week old when the Liberals under Jean Chrétien took the unprecedented step of releasing their entire policy platform in one document. The official title of the publication was Creating Opportunity: The Liberal Plan for Canada, but it would soon be known far and wide as the Red Book. Thousands of copies were printed and Liberal candidates across the country were soon using it as a prop in all their campaign appearances. Never before had a party released such a detailed platform and the Red Book definitely assisted as Chrétien and his party cruised to a majority victory over Kim Campbell and her Progressive Conservatives a month later.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.