Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
 | |
| Founded: | July 1, 1867 (nation's founding) |
| Dissolved: | December 7, 2003 Merged with CA into the Conservative Party |
| Colours: | Blue (usu. w/ Red detailing) |
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC) was a Canadian political party that existed from 1867 to 2003.
- Before 1942 it was simply called the Conservative Party: see Conservative Party of Canada (historic)
In 1942 Manitoba Premier John Bracken, a long-time leader of that province's Progressive Party agreed to become leader of the Conservatives on condition that the party add Progressive to its name. Despite this, most former Progressive supporters preferred to vote for the Liberals or the CCF, and Bracken's leadership soon came to an end.
Though Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was a Tory, the party spent the majority of its history in opposition as the nation's number two party, behind the Liberals. It has never fully recovered from the fragmentation of Brian Mulroney's broad coalition in the mid-1980s, and during the most recent Parliament held only 15 of 301 seats in the House of Commons.
One major weakness historically was the inability to win support in Quebec, due in large part to the Conscription_Crisis_of_1917. Even though the Quebec Conservative Party dominated politics in that province for the first thirty years of Confederation at both the federal and provincial levels, in the 20th century the party was never able to be a force in provincial politics and ultimately dissolved into the Union Nationale in 1935. In 20th century federal politics, the Conservatives were never able to win more than a handful of seats in Quebec with the exception of the Diefenbaker landslide of 1958 (due to assistance from the Union Nationale's electoral machine) and the elections of 1984 and 1988 when Brian Mulroney led the party and was able to build an electoral coalition that included Quebec nationalists.
Ideology
The Progressive Conservative Party was generally described as centre-right in political terms. Like their Liberal rivals, the party defined itself as a "big tent", welcoming a broad variety of members who supported relatively loosely defined goals. Unlike the Liberals, there was a long history of ongoing factionalization within this tent--owing to its second-place status, the party frequently reached out to particular political groups in order to garner enough support to topple the Liberals. These groups usually remained semiautonomous blocks within the party, such as Quebec nationalists in the 1980s. In later years, observers generally grouped the PC Party's core membership into three camps, "Red Tories", "Blue Tories", and "Neoconservatives."
Red Tories tended to be relatively liberal in their social policy, placing a high value on the principle of noblesse oblige, but conservative in their economic policy. Historically they comprised the largest bloc of the Canadian Conservative party. Notable Red Tories include Sir John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield, Dalton Camp, W.L. Morton, William Davis, Joe Clark, and Flora MacDonald.
Blue Tories were conservative in both social and economic policy. The Blue Tories were significantly reduced in numbers during the late 1970s and early 1980s as many drifted towards neoconservatism (as epitomized by the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) but in federal office never truly embraced Reaganomics and its anathema to "big government" as vociferously as was done outside of Canada.
Neoconservatives lean towards social conservatism and economic liberalism. Support for the Canadian Alliance and its predecessor, the Reform Party of Canada derived principally from this group, and that support carried forward into the new Conservative Party of Canada.
The success of the neoconservative movement in appropriating the label "Conservative" has brought into debate the very definition of conservatism in Canada today. Although adhering to economic philosophies similar to those originally advanced by 19th-century liberals (known confusingly as both neoliberalism and neoconservatism), the need to emphasize their social conservatism led the Canadian Alliance to agree to the name "Conservative Party of Canada" for the new party, to better market themselves to the electorate.
Canadian conservatism has historically more closely resembled that which is practised in the United Kingdom and Europe than in the United States. As was common amongst 19th century conservative movements, Canadian Tories opposed the rollback of Crown intervention in social and economic matters advocated by the liberals of the era. In contrast to their American conservative counterparts, however, they did not undertake as dramatic an ideological turnaround in the first half of the 20th century in rejecting mercantilism and nascent notions of the welfare state.
History
In the early days of the Canadian confederation, the party supported a mercantilist approach to economic development: export-led growth with high import barriers to protect local industry. On the foreign relations front, the party was pro-monarchy and pro-empire. Although it was seen by some French Canadians as supporting a policy of assimilation, it nonetheless dominated Canadian politics for the nation's first 30 years of existence. In general, Canada's political history has consisted of Tories alternating power with their arch-rivals, the Liberals, albeit often in minority governments supported by smaller parties.
After a long period of Liberal dominance, John Diefenbaker won a shocking electoral victory for the Tories in 1958. Capturing most of the West and much of Ontario, Diefenbaker attempted to pursue a policy of distancing Canada from the United States. His cabinet split over Diefenbaker's position refusing American demands that Canada accept nuclear warheads for Bomarc missiles based in North Bay, Ontario, and La Macaza, Quebec, contributing to the Tory government's defeat at the hands of Lester Pearson's Liberals in the 1963 election. Diefenbaker hung on as Progressive Conservative leader until 1967 when increasing unease at his radical policies, authoritarian leadership and perceived unelectability led to a convention where Nova Scotia Premier Robert Stanfield defeated Diefenbaker for the party's leadership.
By the late 1960s, following Quebec's Quiet Revolution, Canada's main political parties attempted to lure more support from Canada's francophone population. At the same time, the Tories finally began their move away from mercantilism towards a neoliberal platform of free trade. Both movements culminated with Brian Mulroney's becoming prime minister after the election of 1984. Though he declared himself an opponent to free trade with the United States during his campaign for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party in 1983, a growing continentalist sentiment among Canadian business leaders as well as the impact of the "Reagan Revolution" on Canadian conservative thought, led Mulroney's government to endorse the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada's 1985 recommendation that Canada pursue a free trade deal with the United States. Traditionally, it had been the Liberal Party that held a continentalist position and the Conservatives who opposed free trade with the United States in favour of economic links with Britain, but with the dissolution of the British Empire and the economic nationalism of the Liberals under Pierre Trudeau the traditional positions of the two parties became reversed.
It was with this background that Mulroney fought the 1988 election and won on the issue of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
During Mulroney's tenure as Canadian prime minister, a number of elements together contributed to the fall of the Progressive Conservative party at the federal level. First, economic issues dogged the party toward the end of Mulroney's term as prime minister: Canada suffered its worst recession since the Second World War, unemployment rose to the highest levels since the Great Depression, the federal government faced high and persistent deficits, and a much-hated new tax, the GST, was introduced. Second, under Mulroney, the party's base in Quebec came from Quebec nationalists, who withdrew their support after the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, forming the Bloc QuÃÂébÃÂécois.
Finally, attempts from both Tories and Liberals to woo Quebec drew the ire of western Canadians, who turned their support to the Reform Party of Canada and its successor, the Canadian Alliance. These two factors and the first past the post system used in Canada led to Mulroney's resignation and the disastrous election of 1993 under his successor, Kim Campbell in which the Conservatives went from being the majority party to holding only two seats, losing official party status in the House of Commons. They regained official status in the 1997 election, but never surpassed 20 seats in the House of Commons.
The rise of the Canadian Alliance was doubtlessly damaging to the Tories, though there remains some debate as to the precise degree. Many observers alleged that from 1993 to 2003 the "conservative" vote was split between the two parties, allowing Liberal candidates to win ridings formerly considered to be Tory strongholds. Others insisted that a legitimate ideological gulf existed between the more ideological Alliance and the more moderate Red Tory-influenced PC Party, pointing to surveys that indicated many Tory voters would rather select the Liberals as their second choice rather than the Alliance.
On October 15, 2003, it was announced that the Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party would unite to form a new party called the Conservative Party of Canada. The union was ratified on December 5 and December 6 by both parties, and the new Conservative Party was formally registered on December 8. On March 20, 2004 former Alliance leader Stephen Harper became leader of the new party.
Rump PC caucus
However, on January 9, 2004, a group loyal to the Progressive Conservative Party and opposed to the merger (which they viewed as an Alliance takeover) filed application with the Chief Electoral Officer to register a party called the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
In Parliament, a rump Progressive Conservative caucus remains, consisting of individuals who have refused to join the new Conservative Party. In the House of Commons Joe Clark and John Herron sit as PC members. Clark will not run for re-election while Herron has announced he intends to run in the upcoming election (expected in the spring of 2004) as a Liberal. In the Senate, William Doody, Lowell Murray and Norman Atkins remain as the sole Progressive Conservative senators. As Senators are appointed in Canada to sit until they reach the age of 75 it is possible that there will be rump Progressive Conservative senators until 2011 when Murray, the youngest of the three, attains the mandatory retirement age.
1 On this occasion, Meighen failed in his attempts to win re-election to the House of Commons, so Hanson remained Leader of the Opposition throughout Meighen's term
2 Bracken did not win election to the House of Commons until 1945, so Hanson remained Leader of the Opposition until January 1943, when he was replaced by Gordon Graydon
3 On two occasions when Drew was too ill to perform his duties, William Earl Rowe served as Leader of the Opposition
4 Michael Starr served as Leader of the Opposition until November 5, 1967, when Stanfield, who had previously been premier of Nova Scotia, won election to ParliamentConservative prime ministers of Canada
Tory leaders since Confederation:
(Liberal-)Conservative Party of Canada
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
See also: Progressive Conservative leadership conventionsProvincial Progressive Conservative parties:
See also
Endnotes