Conservatism in Canada - Conservatism in Western Canada

Conservatism in Western Canada

The four western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have long been a hotbed for protest politics and political parties of the far left and far right. All four provinces have strong rural and Christian constituencies, leading to an active presence of the Christian Right. Historically, the heavy presence of agriculture led to the emergence in the past of large left-leaning, agrarian farmer's based protest movements such as the Progressive Party of Canada and the United Farmers of Canada which supported free trade with the United States and increased social benefits. These movements were later absorbed by the Liberal Party of Canada and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).

During the Great Depression two radical protest movements appeared, the CCF in Saskatchewan advocated progressive social policies and democratic socialism; while in Alberta, the Social Credit Party of Alberta formed a provincial government that favoured evangelical Christian conservatism, provincial control over natural resources, limited government intervention in the economy and a radical philosophy known as Social Credit based on providing dividends to the population to support small businesses and free enterprise.

The Social Credit Party went on to dominate the government of Alberta from 1934–1971 and British Columbia from 1951–1972 and 1975-1991. However unlike the CCF which survived the test of time and expanded to form provincial governments and gain support nationwide and later morphing into the social democratic, New Democratic Party the Social Credit Party eventually died out. Their popularity grew in Quebec leading to Western supporters of Social Credit feeling isolated by the federal party's Quebec nationalism. The provincial Social Credit governments of British Columbia and Alberta eventually abandoned Social Credit economic policies and followed staunchly conservative policies, while maintaining ties with the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Canada as opposed to the federal Social Credit Party of Canada.

In BC the Social Credit Party was replaced as the party of the right wing by the British Columbia Liberal Party, and in Alberta they were completely annihilated by the more moderate Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, leaving both parties as marginal political minnows. In the 1980 federal election, the Social Credit Party of Canada lost all of its remaining seats and was forced to disband in 1989. Most of its Western members moved onto the ideologically similar Reform Party of Canada, founded by Preston Manning, the son of Alberta's former Social Credit premier, Ernest Manning.

The Reform Party grew out of the province of Alberta and was fed by dissatisfaction with the federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. Right-wing Westerners felt that Mulroney's neoliberal economic policies did not go nearly far enough, that his government was overly favourable toward the more populous provinces of Quebec and Ontario, that his policies on social issues such as abortion and the death penalty were too liberal, and that, like the Liberal Party of Canada, the Progressive Conservatives had allegedly come to not take Western demands for provincial economic autonomy seriously enough.

Though for most of the 1990s the Tories enjoyed roughly the same electoral support as the Reform Party due to Canada's First Past the Post system of elected representatives to the Canadian House of Commons, Reform dominated the position of Official Opposition to the government. In 1999 the Reform Party was dissolved and joined by some right-wing members of the PC Party to create the Canadian Alliance; however, this party was unable to attract any real support east of Manitoba and was dissolved in 2003, merging with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to create the new Conservative Party of Canada. This party, led by former Alliance leader Stephen Harper, won a minority government in the 2006 federal election, with 36% of the vote and 124 seats in the House of Commons out of 308.

In Alberta, the Progressive Conservatives have dominated the government since 1971, following slightly right-wing policies under premiers Peter Lougheed, Don Getty, Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. In BC, the BC Liberals have taken a rightward economic turn under Premier Gordon Campbell in contrast to the previous left-wing New Democrats, to fill the gap left by the defeat of the Socreds. In Saskatchewan, the centre-right Saskatchewan Party formed the government in 2007 after many years of New Democratic Party rule. In Manitoba, the social democratic New Democratic Party currently forms government; however, federally, the Conservatives are dominant in all four Western provinces.