Maine dropped out of the race after the riding's nomination meeting was scheduled for an early date, arguing that this favoured Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was elected handily as the Liberals took all but one of Ontario's 101 seats—the closest any party has come to sweeping the country's biggest province at the federal level.
For many years, she was known as a strong supporter of Paul Martin in his bid to succeed Jean Chrétien as leader of the Liberal Party.
Chamberlain won another easy victory in the election of 2004, defeating her Conservative opponent by nearly 10,000 votes in the redistributed riding of Guelph.
She was one of the more socially conservative members of the Liberal caucus, and was a vocal opponent of her own party's plans to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.