Progressive Party of Canada - Demise

Demise

Crerar attempted to introduce certain attributes of a standard party to the Progressives, including Parliamentary Whips and a national party organization. These efforts were resisted, however, and in 1922, Crerar resigned as leader. He was replaced by Robert Forke, another ex-Liberal who agreed with Crerar on most issues. The Progressives proved unsuccessful in Parliament, and lost much of their moderate support in eastern Canada. While in the 1921 election Crerar had toured the entire nation, Forke abandoned everything east of Manitoba. In the 1925 election, the Progressives lost almost all of their Ontario members, but were still moderately successful in the west.

This left the party dominated by the radical Alberta wing. Forke resigned as Progressive house leader on June 30, 1926, one day after Mackenzie King resigned as Prime Minister. Forke and most of the Manitoba Progressives made a deal with the Liberal Party and ran as Liberal-Progressives in the 1926 election prompted by the fall of the interim Conservative government of Arthur Meighen. The Liberals were able to form a stable minority government following the 1926 election with the support of the 7 elected Liberal-Progressive MPs and Forke entered the Mackenzie King cabinet as Minister of Immigration and Colonization. The Alberta Progressives reconstituted themselves as parliamentary representatives of the United Farmers of Alberta electing 11 MPs in the 1926 election and 9 in 1930 - most of whom were members of the radical Ginger Group faction of left wing Progressive, Labour and United Farmer MPs. The remaining UFA MPs were routed in the election of 1935 when most sitting United Farmers of Alberta MPs joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and were defeated at the polls by the Social Credit Party of Canada. Only three MPs were elected as Progressives in the 1930 election, Milton Neil Campbell and Archibald M. Carmichael of Saskatchewan and Agnes MacPhail of Ontario. MacPhail successfully ran for re-election as a United Farmers of Ontario-Labour candidate in the 1935 election but was defeated running under the same banner in 1940.