Progressive Party of Saskatchewan - Electoral Participation

Electoral Participation

The Progressives ran seven candidates and elected six members to the Saskatchewan legislature in the 1921 general election despite the absence of a provincial organization due to the reluctance of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association to break with the Saskatchewan Liberal Party.

The Liberals had a tradition of consulting the SGGA about farm policy and of appointing prominent farm activists to cabinet such as Charles Dunning and John Maharg. A political crisis ensued the Liberal government in late 1921 in which Premier William Melville Martin angered the SGGA by campaigning for the federal Liberal Party of Canada against the Progressive Party of Canada in the 1921 federal election. Agriculture Minister Maharg, a former SGGA president, resigned from the Cabinet in protest and crossed the floor to sit as an Independent and become Leader of the Opposition. Martin himself was forced to step down and the federal Progressives won 15 of 16 Saskatchewan seats in the federal election.

The SGGA subsequently authorized the creation of local political action committees across the province but were unable to build on the 1921 federal breakthrough and only ran 6 of a possible 63 candidates in the next two provincial elections. Despite its initial anger at the Liberals, the SGGA did not sustain its commitment to independent political action, particularly after the Premier Martin, the SGGA's antagonist, stepped down in 1922 and was replaced as Liberal leader and Premier by Charles Avery Dunning, a former activist with the SGGA who had been managing director of the SGGA owned Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company. Dunning was able to regain the confidence of the official farmers movement and re-establish the Liberal Party's credentials as a farmer's party and in 1924 the SGGA decided to withdrawal from electoral politics.

Nevertheless, in the 1925 provincial election the Progressive Party increased its share of the vote from 7.5% to over 23%, but failed to add to its six member caucus. However it formed the official opposition due to the poor standing of the Saskatchewan Conservative Party.