Conservative Party of Canada
The Conservative Party of Canada, sometimes referred to as the Tories, is a federal political party in Canada. The party sits at the centre-right to right of the Canadian political spectrum, with their federal rival, the centre to centre-left Liberal Party of Canada, positioned to their left. The Conservatives are defined as a "big tent" party, practicing "brokerage politics" and welcoming a broad variety of members, including "Red Tories" and "Blue Tories".
The CPC was formed by the merger of the two main right-leaning parties, the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance. The PC Party's roots go back to the original Conservative Party of Canada, which had formed numerous governments dating back to Canadian Confederation in 1867. In the 1993 federal election, the PC Party's Western Canadian support transferred to the Reform Party, which later became the Canadian Alliance. When it became clear that neither the PC Party nor the Canadian Alliance could beat the incumbent Liberals that had governed since the 1993 election, an effort to unite the right-of-centre parties emerged. In 2003, the Canadian Alliance and the PCs merged, forming the Conservative Party of Canada.
During the Conservative Party's governance of Canada from 2006 to 2015, its economic policies included reducing sales tax, reducing income taxes, reducing business taxes, balancing the national budget, creating the tax-free savings account, and creating the Universal Child Care Benefit. In social policy, the government eliminated the long-gun registry, introduced mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes, raised the age of consent to 16 years of age, permitted the construction of several pipelines, and withdrew Canada from the Kyoto Protocol. The government also supported the State of Israel, negotiated the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, and negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Under its first leader, Stephen Harper, the party governed with two minority governments after the federal elections of 2006 and 2008. It then won a majority government in the 2011 federal election before being defeated in the 2015 federal election by a majority Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau. Despite winning a plurality of the vote in each election, the party remained in opposition after losing the 2019 and 2021 elections under its second and third leaders, Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole respectively. Pierre Poilievre was elected leader in the 2022 leadership election, leading the party through the 2025 election, which it again lost to the Liberals, while retaining Official Opposition status.
History
Predecessors
The Conservative Party is political heir to a series of right-of-centre parties that have 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, members of the present-day Conservative Party of Canada are sometimes referred to as "Tories". The modern 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 made 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 Quebec nationalists who were angered over Quebec not 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 late 1980s and 1990s, federal conservative politics became split by the creation of a new western-based protest party, the populist and social conservative Reform Party of Canada created by Preston Manning, the son of an Alberta Social Credit premier, Ernest Manning. Westerners reportedly felt betrayed by the federal Progressive Conservative Party, seeing it as catering to Quebec and urban Ontario interests over theirs. In 1989, Reform made headlines in the political scene when its first member of Parliament, Deborah Grey, was elected in a by-election in Alberta, which was a shock to the PCs, who had almost complete electoral dominance over the province for years. Another defining event for western conservatives was when Mulroney accepted the results of an unofficial Senate election held in Alberta, which resulted in the appointment of a Reformer, Stanley Waters, to the Senate.
In the 1993 election, support for the Progressive Conservative Party collapsed, and the party's representation 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 PC Party rebounded slightly with 20 seats in 1997 and 12 in 2000, but was unable to challenge Reform in Western Canada; meanwhile, Reform dominated the western provinces but struggled to win seats east of Manitoba. Their electoral problems were accentuated by Canada's single member plurality electoral system, which resulted in numerous seats being won by the Liberal Party, even when the total 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. This led to calls for the two parties to merge.
Foundation and early history
On October 15, 2003, after months of talks between the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party, Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay announced the "'Conservative Party Agreement-in-Principle", that would merge their parties to create the new Conservative Party of Canada. After the agreement-in-principle was ratified by the membership of both parties, the new party was officially registered with Elections Canada on December 7. Senator John Lynch-Staunton, a PC, was named interim leader, pending the outcome of the party's inaugural leadership election.The merger 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 leadership candidate David Orchard argued that his written agreement with 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 before negotiations with the Canadian Alliance had been completed. Over the course of the following 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 they would not join the new Conservative Party caucus. In the months following the merger, Rick Borotsik, who had been elected as Manitoba's only PC, became openly critical of the new party's leadership, while former leadership candidate Scott Brison and former Alliance leadership candidate Keith Martin left the party. Brison, Herron and Martin 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, and a fourth soon left to sit as an independent. In February 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin appointed two anti-merger Progressive Conservatives, Nancy Ruth and Elaine McCoy, to the Senate. In March 2006, Nancy Ruth joined the new Conservative Party.
Inaugural leadership election
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 Representative 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%.
Stephen Harper (2004–2015)
In opposition (2004–2006)
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 generally seen as being able to form government. The Liberals attempted to counter this with an early election call, as this would give the Conservatives less time to consolidate their merger. During the first half of the campaign, polls showed a rise in support 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 about 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 much 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 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 order package was an effort to address rising homicide rates, which had gone up 12% in 2004.
On November 24, 2005, Harper introduced a motion of no confidence which, with the backing of the other two opposition parties, passed on November 28, 2005. This resulted in an election scheduled for January 23, 2006. The Conservatives started off the first month of the campaign by making a series of policy-per-day announcements, which included a Goods and Services Tax reduction and a child-care allowance. These announcements played to Harper's strengths as a policy wonk, as opposed to the 2004 election and summer 2005 where he tried to overcome the perception that he was cool and aloof. Though his party showed only modest movement in the polls, Harper's personal approval numbers, which had always trailed his party's significantly, began to rise. In addition, the party also received more newspaper endorsements than in 2004.
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.