debt. The government's willingness to affirm Quebec's demands for recognition as a distinct society was seen as a betrayal by many westerners as well as angering Canadian Nationalists mostly from Ontario. The Reform Party of Canada was founded on a strongly right-wing populist conservative platform as an alternative voice for these western conservatives. The Progressive Conservative Party lost a large base of its support toward the end of the Mulroney era. Brian Mulroney's failed attempts to reform the Canadian Constitution with the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax lost him most of his support. Following Mulroney's resignation in 1993 and Kim Campbell's brief tenure, the Conservatives were reduced to only two seats in Parliament in the 1993 federal election. The Liberal Party was elected with a strong majority and the Reform Party gradually replaced the Tories as the major right-wing party in Canada. The Reform Party under Preston Manning would become the Official Opposition from 1997 to 2000. Throughout the 1990s, many social conservatives and Blue Tories in the PC Party began to drift slowly to the Reform Party and then in droves to the Reform Party's direct successor, the Canadian Alliance. This left the PC Party under the control of the moderate Red Tory faction. Despite taking what they believed to be more popular socially progressive approaches on certain issues, the PCs significantly fell in the popular vote from the 1997 to 2000 federal elections and were not able to greatly increase their representation in the House of Commons. The Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance dominated the opposition benches. Support for both the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives was negligible in Quebec until the 2006 federal election, where the renewed Conservative party won 10 seats in Quebec. In the west, the Reform Party took most of the PC Party's former seats, but held much more socially or economically conservative views than the old party on most subjects (regarding, for example, homosexuality, religion in public life, gun control, and government intervention in the economy). The PCs retained moderate support in the Atlantic Provinces, would manage to regain a few seats. They also retained scattered support across the country. The result was that neither new party managed to approach the success of the Progressive Conservatives prior to 1993. In many ridings the conservative vote was split, letting other parties win: