The Red Book, officially titled Creating Opportunity: The Liberal Plan for Canada, was the platform of the Liberal Party of Canada in the 1993 federal election. It earned its name from its bright red cover, red being the official colour of the Liberal Party. It was a 112-page booklet; many thousands of copies of it were printed, and it was widely distributed. Purpose It was exceptional in how specific it was; while platforms before and since have contained few substantive promises and many vague statements of principle, the Red Book laid out a long list of changes that the Liberals would make if brought to power. It was also rare in Canada to have an entire platform released at once. Generally, a party would release a policy idea, wait for it to gather as much media attention as possible, and then release another. Those ideas had also been released during speeches by the party leader, not printed in unbending prose. Perhaps most central was that the Liberal Red Book gave costs for each of their promises and summed them. Never before had a party attempted to clearly prove that its promises were fiscally responsible and practical. Paul Martin, the man who led the team that produced the Red Book was less complimentary about the Red Book in private as during his time in office as Finance Minister, he was often reported to have said: "Don't tell me about the Red Book, I wrote the damn thing, and I know that it is a lot of crap!" It was one of the first "contract with the public" type platforms, an idea used by the United States Republican Party in its 1994 Contract with America and Mike Harris's 1995 Common Sense Revolution in Ontario. 1993 election The Liberals, out of power since 1984, were widely expected to win the 1993 election based on the great pan-Canadian dislike for the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. The Liberals under Jean Chrétien were worried by a jump in Tory support with the selection of new leader Kim Campbell. A larger concern was the general Canadian antipathy towards politicians after the tumultuous and scandal plagued Mulroney years. The 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown Accord was widely interpreted of a rejection of Canada's political elite by the general population. To attempt to break through the cynicism and distrust the Liberals felt that being more specific and