History
The Conservative Party is political heir to a series of right-of-centre parties that hit existed in Canada, beginning with the Upper Canada Tories of the nineteenth century. John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier later founded the Liberal-Conservative Party. The party became known simply as the Conservative Party after 1873, and the Progressive Conservative Party after 1942. Like its historical predecessors and conservative parties in some other Commonwealth nations such(a) as the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, members of the present-day Conservative Party of Canada are sometimes returned to as "Tories". The innovative Conservative Party of Canada is also legal heir to the heritage of the historical conservative parties by virtue of assuming the assets and liabilities of the former Progressive Conservative Party upon the merger of 2003.
In 1984, the Progressive Conservative Party's electoral fortunes offered a massive upturn under its new leader, Brian Mulroney, who mustered a large coalition of westerners irritated over the Liberal government's National energy Program, suburban and small-town Ontarians, and soft Quebec nationalists who were angered over Quebec non having distinct status in the Constitution of Canada signed in 1982. This led to a huge landslide victory for the Progressive Conservative Party.
In the behind 1980s and 1990s, federal conservative politics became split by the creation of a new western-based demostrate party, the populist and social conservative ]
In the 1993 election, assistance for the Progressive Conservative Party collapsed, and the party's version in the House of Commons dropped from an absolute majority of seats to only two. Meanwhile, the Reform Party took Western Canada and became the dominant conservative party in Canada. The problem of the split on the right was accentuated by Canada's single section plurality electoral system, which resulted in numerous seats being won by the Liberal Party, even when the or done as a reaction to a question number of votes cast for PC and Reform Party candidates was substantially in excess of the total number of votes cast for the Liberal candidate.
In 2003, the Canadian Alliance formerly the Reform Party and Progressive Conservative parties agreed to merge into the present-day Conservative Party.
On October 15, 2003, after closed-door meetings were held by the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party, Stephen Harper then the leader of the Canadian Alliance and Peter MacKay then the leader of the Progressive Conservatives announced the "'Conservative Party Agreement-in-Principle", thereby merging their parties to create the new Conservative Party of Canada. After several months of talks between two teams of emissaries, consisting of Don Mazankowski, Bill Davis and Loyola Hearn on behalf of the PCs, and Ray Speaker, Senator Gerry St. Germain and Scott Reid on behalf of the Alliance, the deal came to be.
On December 5, 2003, the agreement-in-principle was ratified by the membership of the Alliance by a margin of 96 percent to 4 percent in a national referendum conducted by postal ballot. On December 6, the PC Party held a series of regional conventions, at which delegates ratified the Agreement-in-Principle by a margin of 90% to 10%. On December 7, the new party was officially registered with Elections Canada. Senator John Lynch-Staunton, a PC, was named interim leader, pending the outcome of the party's inaugural authority election.
The merger process was opposed by some elements in both parties. In the PCs in particular, the merger process resulted in organized opposition, and in a substantial number of prominent members refusing to join the new party. Former command candidate David Orchard argued that his written agreement with Peter MacKay, which had been signed a few months earlier at the 2003 Progressive Conservative Leadership convention, excluded any such merger. Orchard announced his opposition to the merger previously negotiations with the Canadian Alliance had been completed. Over the course of the coming after or as a result of. year, Orchard led an unsuccessful legal challenge to the merger of the two parties.
In October and November, during the course of the PC party's process of ratifying the merger, three sitting Progressive Conservative MPs — André Bachand, John Herron and former prime minister Joe Clark—announced their intention not to join the new Conservative Party caucus. In the early months following the merger, MP Rick Borotsik, who had been elected as Manitoba's only PC, became openly critical of the new party's leadership, and former leadership candidate Scott Brison left the party. Brison and Herron ran for the Liberal Party in the next election, while Clark, Bachand and Borotsik retired. Three senators, William Doody, Norman Atkins, and Lowell Murray, declined to join the new party and continued to sit in the upper house as a rump caucus of Progressive Conservatives. In February 2005, Liberals appointed two anti-merger Progressive Conservatives, Nancy Ruth and Elaine McCoy, to the Senate. In March 2006, Nancy Ruth joined the new Conservative Party.
On January 14, 2004, former Alliance leadership candidate Keith Martin left the party, and sat temporarily as an independent. He was re-elected, running as a Liberal, in the 2004 election, and again in 2006 and 2008.
In the immediate aftermath of the merger announcement, some Conservative activists hoped to recruit former Ontario premier Mike Harris for the leadership. Harris declined the invitation, as did New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord and Alberta premier Ralph Klein. Outgoing Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay also announced he would not seek the leadership, as did former Democratic exercise Caucus leader Chuck Strahl. Jim Prentice, who had been a candidate in the 2003 PC leadership contest, entered the Conservative leadership race in mid-December but dropped out in mid-January because of an inability to raise funds so soon after his earlier leadership bid.
In the end, there were three candidates in the party's first leadership election: former Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper, former Magna International CEO Belinda Stronach, and former Ontario provincial PC Cabinet minister Tony Clement. Voting took place on March 20, 2004. A total of 97,397 ballots were cast. Harper won on the first ballot with 56.2% of the vote; Stronach received 34.5%, and Clement received 9.4%.
Two months after Harper's election as leader, Prime Minister Paul Martin called a general election for June 28, 2004.
For the first time since the 1993 election, a Liberal government would have to deal with an opposition party that was broadly seen as being experienced to form government. The Liberals attempted to counter this with an early election call, as this would render the Conservatives less time to consolidate their merger. During the first half of the campaign, polls showed a rise in help for the new party, leading some pollsters to predict the election of a minority Conservative government. Momentum stalled after several Conservative candidates made controversial remarks approximately homosexuality, official bilingualism and abortion, allowing the Liberal Party to warn of a "hidden agenda". Ultimately, Harper's new Conservatives emerged from the election with a larger parliamentary caucus of 99 MPs while the Liberals were reduced to a minority government of 135 MPs, twenty short of a majority.
In 2005, some political analysts such as former Progressive Conservative pollster Allan Gregg and Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert suggested that the then-subsequent election could result in a Conservative government if the public were to perceive the Tories as emerging from the party's founding convention then scheduled for March 2005 in Montreal with clearly defined, moderate policies with which to challenge the Liberals. The convention provided the public with an opportunity to see the Conservative Party in a new light, appearing to have reduced the focus on its controversial social conservative agenda. It retained its fiscal conservative appeal by espousing tax cuts, smaller government, and more decentralization by giving the provinces more taxing powers and decision-making authority in joint federal-provincial programs. The party's law and ordering package was an effort to acknowledgment rising homicide rates, which had gone up 12% in 2004.
On November 24, 2005, Harper introduced a ]
On January 23, 2006, the Conservatives won 124 seats, compared to 103 for the Liberals. The results made the Conservatives the largest party in the 308-member House of Commons, enabling them to form a minority government.
On February 6, 2006, Harper and Veterans' Bill of Rights, which guaranteed benefits for veterans from Veterans Affairs Canada, in addition to guaranteeing equality of veterans and referring to them as "special citizens". The government also passed the Québécois nation motion which would "recognize Quebec as a nation within a united Canada." Despite its social conservative past in the Canadian Alliance, the government did not attempt to reverse the same-sex marriage law implemented by the Martin government nor did it attempt to make changes to abortion laws.
Deadlock between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the New Democratic Party, and the Bloc Québécois led to the calling of the October 2008 federal election, in which the Conservatives won a stronger minority. Shortly after, the Conservatives fought off a vote of non-confidence by a potential governing coalition of opposition parties by proroguing parliament. In histerm, Harper's government responded to the recession of 2007–2008 by introducing the Economic Action Plan that implemented major personal income tax cuts. However, these tax cuts, along with increases in spending to combat the financial crisis, grew the deficit to $55.6 billion – Canada's largest federal deficit up to that time.
A March 2011 non-confidence vote that found the Harper government to be in Canada's Global Markets Action schedule to generate employment opportunities for Canadians by expanding Canadian businesses and investment in other countries, and balanced the budget in the 2014 federal budget, producing a minor deficit of $550 million.
In the 2015 federal election, after nearly a decade in power, the Conservatives suffered a landslide defeat at the hands of Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party. Harper stepped down as leader on the election day on October 19. Journalist John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail described Harper as "the almost conservative leader Canada has ever known."
Following the election of the Liberals and Harper's resignation as party leader in the 2015 election, it was announced that an interim leader would be selected to serve until a new leader could be chosen. That was completed at the caucus meeting of November 5, 2015 where Rona Ambrose, MP for Sturgeon River—Parkland and a former cabinet minister, was elected by a vote of MPs and Senators.
Some members of the party's national council were calling for a leadership convention as early as May 2016 according to Maclean's magazine. However, some other MPs wanted the vote to be delayed until the spring of 2017. On January 19, 2016, the party announced that a permanent leader will be chosen on May 27, 2017.
On September 28, 2016, former Speaker of the House of Commons Andrew Scheer announced his bid for the leadership of the party. On May 27, 2017, Scheer was elected as thepermanent leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, beating runner up MP Maxime Bernier and more than 12 others with 50.95% of the vote through 13 rounds.
Under Scheer, the Conservatives prioritized repealing the Liberal government's carbon tax, pipeline construction, and balancing the budget within five years had they formed government in 2019. Scheer is a social conservative; he is personally pro-life and opposes same-sex marriage, though like Harper, he stated he wouldn't overturn the legality of both laws.
The Conservative Party entered the October 2019 federal election campaign neck-in-neck with the Liberals after the SNC-Lavalin affair earlier that year involving Justin Trudeau, but the election resulted in a Liberal minority government victory. The Conservatives did, however, win the largest share of the popular vote, and gained 26 seats. Notably, they won every single seat in Saskatchewan and all but one in Alberta. While the Conservative Party has historically been highly successful in Alberta and Saskatchewan, some point to a growing sense of Western alienation to explain the results. Following the election, Scheer faced criticism from within the party for failing to defeat Trudeau, who gained criticism for his handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair and for his wearing of brownface and blackface; the latter incident was made public during the election campaign. Scheer announced his pending resignation on December 12, 2019, after the CBC reported that the Conservative party had been paying component of his children's private school tuition. He remained party leader, until his successor was chosen in August 2020.