Robert N. Thompson - Return To Canada and Social Credit

Return To Canada and Social Credit

Thompson returned to Canada in 1958 and resumed his activities with Social Credit and soon became president of the national Social Credit Party of Canada, doing much to rebuild the party after it was shut out of Parliament in the massive Progressive Conservative landslide of 1958.

Alberta Premier Ernest Manning saw Thompson as the ideal person to succeed Solon Low as leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada and backed him in a hotly contested leadership vote against Réal Caouette, the movement's leader in Quebec, which was won by Thompson. Years later, Caouette claimed that he would have won, but Manning told him to tell the Quebec delegates to vote for Thompson because the West would never accept a Francophone Catholic as party leader.

Under Thompson's leadership, the Socreds returned to the Commons in the 1962 federal election. Thompson himself was elected from Red Deer, Alberta. However, he was one of only four Socreds elected from English Canada, while the other 26 came from Quebec. Under the circumstances, Thompson was all but forced to name Caouette as the party's deputy leader. Thompson was re-elected in the 1963 and 1965 elections.

The 1962 and 1965 elections produced minority parliaments in which no one party had a majority of seats. This meant that the government had to rely on smaller parties such as Social Credit to pass legislation and remain in power.