of support. The party had received little media attention during the election and 2000 as a whole, due to the media's focus on Canada's newest political party, the Canadian Alliance, the political comeback of former Prime Minister Joe Clark to the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party, and the leadership feud within the Liberal Party between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. The NDP did not expect to do well in the election and aimed to win thirty-two "must-win" seats. The NDP's platform and campaign focused on protecting medicare while attacking the Liberal Party for its tax cuts to wealthy Canadians and corporations. The NDP's focus on attacking the Liberals failed to recognize the surging support for the Canadian Alliance in the province of Saskatchewan, which the NDP had hoped to gain seats in. The NDP failed to galvanize support, as it remained low in support in polling results throughout most of the election campaign. NDP leader Alexa McDonough performed badly in the French-language debate due to her not being fluent in French. In the English-language debate, McDonough attacked Alliance leader Stockwell Day for favouring two-tier health care and attacked Liberal leader Jean Chrétien for giving out tax cuts to the wealthy rather than funding Canada's public health care system. Progressive Conservative Party The Progressive Conservative Party aimed to regain its former place in Canadian politics under the leadership of former Prime Minister Joe Clark. The PC Party had a very disappointing election, falling from 20 to 12 seats, and being almost exclusively confined to the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland. It won the 12 seats needed for Official party status in the House of Commons, however. Failure to win 12 seats might have marginalized the party in the House of Commons, and likely led to a more rapid decline. Governing parties have the option of extending party status to caucuses of less than twelve members at their discretion. Had the Progressive Conservatives been just a few seats short of the requisite twelve and the NDP had stayed at least twelve seats, the Liberal government would likely have exercised this option as they had done for Social Credit in 1974. Results |- style="background-color:#CCCCCC" !style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2" colspan="2"|Party !style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2"|Party leader !style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2"|Candidates !style="text-align:center;" colspan="4"|Seats !style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"|Popular vote |- style="background-color:#CCCCCC" | style="text-align:center;" |1997 | style="text-align:center;" |Dissol. | style="text-align:center;" |Elected | style="text-align:center;" |% Change | style="text-align:center;" |# | style="text-align:center;" |% | style="text-align:center;" |Change | style="text-align:left;"