The incumbent prime minister, Brian Mulroney, led his Progressive Conservative Party to a second majority government.

[2] Brian Mulroney led the Progressive Conservative Party to a landslide majority government victory in the 1984 federal election.

[3] The campaign was also hampered by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) report that stated there was a movement in the backroom to replace Turner with Jean Chrétien, even though Turner had passed a leadership review in 1986 with 76.3 percent of delegates rejecting a leadership convention.

The Liberal surge prompted the PCs to stop the relatively calm campaign they had been running and instead run a more negative campaign, capitalizing on the perceived lack of public confidence in Turner, his perceived inability to lead the Liberal Party, and arguing that he only opposed free trade because of political opportunism.

[3] The Progressive Conservatives won a reduced but strong majority government with 169 seats, and the free trade agreement would go into effect on January 1, 1989.

In an ironic reversal of most prior federal elections, the PCs owed their majority to their success in Quebec, where they achieved the best result in party history by winning 63 of 75 seats.

This second election loss sealed Turner's fate; he would eventually resign in 1990, and was succeeded by Jean Chrétien, who proved to be a more effective leader and when in government, accepted free trade with the United States and did not overturn CUSFTA.

[3] Despite the New Democratic Party enjoying their best result at the time (winning 43 seats), Ed Broadbent resigned as leader in 1989.

The Western Canada Concept party, led by Doug Christie, fielded three candidates in British Columbia.

This was the first election for the newly founded Reform Party which for this vote only contested seats in Western Canada.

However, Deborah Grey would win the first seat for Reform, Beaver River in Alberta, in a by-election held four months later.

Grey, who had finished a distant fourth running in the same riding in the general election, succeeded rookie Progressive Conservative MP John Dahmer.