The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada ran a full slate of candidates in the 1997 federal election, and won 20 seats out of 301 to emerge as the fifth largest party in the House of Commons of Canada. Many of the party's candidates have their own biography pages; information about others may be found here.

Quebec Claude Boulard (Brome—Missisquoi) Claude Boulard (died 7 June 2003) was a radio and television personality. He was the founder of the radio station CIMO-FM in Magog, which he sold to Radiomutuel in 1986."Radiomutuel buys stations," Montreal Gazette, 16 September 1986, D2. He also helped promote JoJo Savard, a television astrologist who attracted national media notoriety in the 1990s. Boulard's links to Savard became an issue in the 1997 campaign; Pierre Foglia of La Presse described him as a "king of fools" who should not have been allowed to run for a credible political party. Boulard defended his work as a professional host and said there was nothing illegal about Savard's business.Jeff Heinrich, "Race in Brome may leave Tory seeing stars," Montreal Gazette, 24 May 1997, A13. He received 12,770 votes (28.09%), finishing second against Liberal Party incumbent Denis Paradis.

He died at age sixty-eight in 2003, after a battle with fibrosis and lung cancer."Décès de l'animateur Claude Boulard," lcn.canoe.ca, 10 June 2003. Retrieved 7 December 2010.

Anie Perrault (Joliette) Anie Perrault is a lawyer, politician, and communications specialist in Quebec. She practised law in Montreal from 1992 to 1995; was national director of communications and public affairs for Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D) from 1999 to 2001; and was vice president, communications for Genome Canada from 2001 to 2004. She became president of Communications Anie Perrault in 2006.Communications Anie Perrault: About Anie Perrault. Retrieved 4 December 2010; Élections Bromont 2009: Candidate Anie PERRAULT , Ville de Bromont. Retrieved 4 December 2010.

Perrault was president of the Young Progressive Conservatives of Quebec in the early 1990s."Tory youth to decide stand," Montreal Gazette, 30 September 1998, A13. She was a special advisor to Jean Charest on three occasions between 1989 and 1997, including during the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty. She later worked as a special advisor to Peter MacKay (1997) and press attachée and senior advisor to Joe Clark (1998–99).Communications Anie Perrault: About Anie Perrault. Retrieved 4 December 2010. Perrault herself ran for the Canadian House of Commons as a Progressive Conservative candidate in 1997 and placed a credible second against the Bloc Québécois incumbent in Joliette.Caroline Rioux, Anie Perrault se présente comme candidate dans Adamsville , cowansville.enregion.ca. Retrieved 4 December 2010. Perrault was twenty-six years old in late 1996; see Jack Aubry, "Charest rebuilds PCs with one-liners, no policies," Ottawa Citizen, 16 December 1996, A1.

She moved to Bromont in 2003 and was elected to a seat on the city's council in 2009.

+ Electoral record Election Division Party Votes % Place Winner 1997 federal Joliette Progressive Conservative 17,417 35.86 2/5 René Laurin, Bloc Québécois 2009 Bromont municipal City Council, Ward Six n/a 214 50.23 1/3 herself

Yves Schelling (Richelieu) Yves Schelling was a foreman in Bécancour.History of Federal Ridings since 1867, RICHELIEU (1997/06/02), Parliament of Canada, 14 August 2009; Tony L. Hill, Canadian politics, riding by riding, 2002, p. 105. In the early 1990s, he served as an assistant to Liberal Member of the National Assembly Maurice Richard."Le député de Nicolet [Maurice Richard] blessé dans un accident d'auto", La Presse, 18 April 1990, B1. He received 6,827 votes (14.16%), finishing third against Bloc Québécois incumbent Louis Plamondon.

Ontario

Gregg Crealock (St. Catharines)

Crealock graduated from the Sheridan College high school equivalency program in 1974. He worked as assistant manager of markets for the Royal Bank of Canada from 1982 to 1985, and was a senior manager with the Bank of Nova Scotia from 1985 to 1988. In 1986, he opened the family-owned Plain & Fancy Restaurant. Crealock was chair of the St. Catharines Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s.

Crealock received 6,503 votes (13.41%), finishing third against Liberal candidate Walt Lastewka. He was 40 years old in 1997 (Globe and Mail, 16 April 1997).

Brian McCutcheon (Scarborough Southwest)

McCutcheon was born on 25 May 1967. He received a Bachelor's Degree from the University of Waterloo in 1991, and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1995. He has worked as an engineer and computer consultant, and was a lawyer in Toronto at the time of the election. If elected, he promised to work to establish a parental responsibility act (Toronto Star, 30 May 1997).

McCutcheon received 5,294 votes (13.67%), finishing third against Liberal incumbent Tom Wappel.

Angie Tomasic (Stoney Creek)

Tomasic was born in northern Greece on 15 September 1961, and moved to Hamilton with her family when she was two years old (Hamilton Spectator, 18 May 1996). She began working as a bank manager in 1984, and had become a senior assistant branch manager with Royal Bank by the mid-1990s. She was also a part-time student at McMaster University in this period, working toward a Bachelor of Arts degree (Hamilton Spectator, 27 May 1995).

Tomasic unsuccessfully campaigned for Hamilton's public school board in 1988 and 1991, and ran for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario in the 1995 provincial election. She endorsed welfare reform and the abolition of affirmative action programs (Hamilton Spectator, 19 May 1995) in the 1995 provincial election, and was credited with running a stronger campaign than expected. She finished a credible third in Hamilton Centre, where the Progressive Conservatives have not historically polled well.

In 1996, Tomasic was chosen as the federal Progressive Conservative candidate for a Hamilton East by-election against Liberal cabinet minister Sheila Copps. Former party leader Joe Clark campaigned with her in the city (Spectator, 11 June 1996). She placed third, behind both Copps and a New Democratic Party candidate.

She won the party's nomination for Stoney Creek in 1997, and finished in third place against Liberal Tony Valeri.

+ Electoral record Election Division Party Votes % Place Winner 1995 provincial Hamilton Centre PC 5,723 26.30 3/5 David Christopherson, New Democratic Party federal by-election, 17 June 1996 Hamilton East PC 3,662 13.76 3/13 Sheila Copps, Liberal 1997 federal Stoney Creek PC 9,440 3/6 Tony Valeri, Liberal

Bill Lee (Sudbury)

Bill Lee has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology (1984) and an honour's degree in Social Work (1991) from Laurentian University. He was a teaching master at Ontario Business College from 1992 to 1994, and was later a director of Northern Ontario Family Counselling Services.Sudbury, Canada Votes '97, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He received 3,459 votes (8.63%), finishing fourth against Liberal incumbent Diane Marleau. He later served as president of the Manitoulin-North Shore Navy Veterans Association."Sailors' story: Canadian navy vets gather in Sudbury", Sudbury Star, 6 October 2002, A7.

Stephen Probyn (Toronto Centre—Rosedale)

Probyn was born on 14 May 1951. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in 1973, and later received a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was a policy adviser to Nova Scotia Premier John Buchanan in 1983, and served as a senior policy adviser to the Canadian Minister Energy, Mines and Resources from 1984 to 1986. He established Probyn & Company in 1994 to fund energy projects, and is a member of the Metro Board of Trade and the Albany Club. He has written in defense of the Monarchy in Canada in the national media (Globe and Mail, 4 October 2000).

He emphasized tax cuts in the 1997 campaign (Toronto Star, 30 May 1997), and received 8,993 votes (19.28%) to finish third against Liberal incumbent Bill Graham.

Probyn supported deregulation policies while working for the government of Brian Mulroney in the 1980s (Globe and Mail, 13 May 1986), and continued to endorse energy deregulation throughout the 1990s (Financial Post, 17 February 1992 and 19 August 1997). In 1997, his firm was involved in the first public-private partnership in Canadian water management in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (Financial Post, 23 March 1996). He served on a Market Design Committee established by the provincial Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris to provide the guidelines for deregulation in Ontario's energy sector (Hamilton Spectator, 22 April 2002).

Probyn was a prominent figure on Bay Street, Canada's financial centre. In 2004, he advocated a Customs Union with the United States of America. He was chairman of the Canadian Association of Income Funds (CAIF) (National Post, 24 November 2005) and president and CEO of the Clean Power Income Fund, which he founded to promote environmentally sound energy sources (Globe and Mail, 24 November 2005). He supported federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's financial update in November 2005.

Frank Snyder (Whitby—Ajax) Snyder (born 23 November 1958) is a Civil Engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo. He founded Snyder Construction in 1982, and was still its owner and operator at the time of the 1997 election. He was defeated for the federal Progressive Conservative nomination in Oshawa for the 1984 election, and for the provincial Progressive Conservative nomination for Durham Centre (Toronto Star, 23 December 1986) in the 1987 election.

He won the Ontario PC nomination for Oshawa in the 1987 campaign, and finished third against New Democratic Party incumbent Mike Breaugh. Snyder ran on a platform of spending cuts, and also criticized pay equity policies, the provincial welfare system, rent control and public automobile insurance (Toronto Star, 1 September 1987).

He received 10,107 votes (20.47%) in the 1997 election, finishing third against Liberal candidate Judi Longfield.

Manitoba Don Knight (Churchill) Knight is a lawyer and former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer (Winnipeg Free Press, 3 September 1993). He ran for the Progressive Conservative Party on two occasions.

An individual named Don Knight was listed as a member of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission in 1998 (WFP, 20 January 1998) and as a crown attorney by 2005 (WFP, 29 September 2005). It is likely that this is the same person.

+ Electoral record Election Division Party Votes % Place Winner 1993 federal Churchill PC 2,438 3/5 Elijah Harper, Liberal 1997 federal Churchill PC 2,452 10.50 4/4 Bev Desjarlais, New Democratic Party

Clare Braun (Provencher)

Clare Braun is a minister and municipal politician. He was the co-owner of Clare's Family Restaurant in Niverville and had spent ten years in church ministry at the time of the 1997 campaign.He was 41 years old at the time. See Darcy Henton, "The Regions", Toronto Star, 27 May 1997, A19. He was elected as the mayor of Niverville in 1995, and was returned without opposition in 1998. Braun ran a "family values" campaign in 1997, stressing his opposition to euthanasia, abortion, and "same-sex legislation", while also opposing the national firearms registry."Clare Braun wants to enter into a covenant with the voters", Winnipeg Free Press, 28 May 1997, A10.