Progressive Party of Canada

The Progressive Party of Canada was a political party in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s.

Origins

The origins of the Progressive Party can, in many ways, be traced to the politics of compromise under Laurier. The number one issue to western farmers was free trade. Because of John A. Macdonald's National Policy the farmers had to pay higher prices for equipment and had to sell the produce for less. But neither of the major parties supported free trade. The west at the turn of the century began to receive an influx of radical political ideas. From the United States came Progressivism and the Non-Partisan League. From Britain the new immigrants brought Fabian socialism. This mix of ideology and discontent led to much discussion of forming an independent party. The main venue for this was the Grain Growers Guide and the first organizations of agricultural protest were the farmers’ organizations such as the Manitoba Grain Growers Association and the United Farmers of Alberta.

They were founded in 1920 by Thomas Crerar, a former Minister of Agriculture in the Unionist government of Robert Borden, who quit the cabinet in 1919 because the budget of Thomas White did not pay sufficient attention to farmers' issues. Crerar became the first leader of the Progressives, and led them to win 65 seats in the 1921 general election.

However, he refused the status of Leader of the Opposition, opting to fight for accomodation of farmers' issues within the government agenda. This was not a successful strategy, and Crerar resigned as leader in 1922.

Although they lost popularity in subsequent elections, they continued to elect members until 1935.

Legacy

After the collapse of the party, it was the Liberals to whom most voters returned. The Liberals had always viewed the Progressives as simply 'Liberals in a hurry', and for a large group of the party's supporters this was true. The most important example of this return to the Grits is T.A. Crerar, who served with the Liberals for decades, first as a cabinet minister and then as a Senator. The more radical of the progressives split two ways. The Ginger Group split off in parliament and joined with the two siting Labour MPs, eventually going on to form the CCF. Other Progressives, especially the radical populists, would later turn towards Social Credit ideology, forming a definite line of western protest that continued to run through the Reform and then Canadian Alliance parties. The conservative party in many received the least of the progressives spoils, inheriting only the name. Later on, however, the western voters that would help propel Diefenbaker and Mulroney to power were an important part of the progressive tradition. More importantly than these effects on individual parties, the progressives also had a great effect on Canada's governmental system -- they were the first successful example of a third party in Canada, and despite the laws of political science, the Canadian parliament has always had a third party present ever since. The Progressives served as both a model and a cautionary tale for those that followed after.

Historiography

The study of the Progressive Party is almost wholly dominated by one author, W.L. Morton, whose 1950 book The Progressive Party in Canada won a Governor General's Award and had been the text on the Progressive party ever since. A great number of more recently published works on western politics cite only Morton’s book in their discussion of the Progressive Party. The context the Red-Tory Morton was writing in was that of a seemingly spreading Social Credit movement, and Morton’s book was in fact the first in a series exploring the origins of the Social Credit movement.