Not a Contradiction in Terms: Exploring the Progressiveness of the Progressive Conservatives

ABSTRACT

Understanding the history of the political right in 20^th-century Canada requires analyzing the most visible political expression of right-of-center policies and views of the post-Second World War period: the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Canada. For its first five decades, it was the de facto government-in-waiting when the Liberals were in office. It won six federal elections, governing 1957–1963, 1979–1980, and 1984–1993. While sometimes derided as centrist by commentators on the far right, its members defined themselves as conservatives, and their beliefs and policies incorporated elements of this ideology. The party had a more progressive wing—sometimes referred to as Red Tories—who believed the better off in society had responsibilities to care for the less fortunate. This article considers the role that progressive values and policies played within the PC Party, and how the party and its leadership responded to changing understandings of what it meant to be progressive in Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Progressive Conservative
• Red Tory
• political culture
• political party
• conservativism

Which Canadian political party was the first to appoint a woman to the federal Cabinet? The first to appoint a First Nations person to the Senate? The first to elect a Black Member of Parliament (MP), who also became the first Black cabinet minister? The first to elect a Chinese Canadian MP? The first (and second) to name a woman as foreign minister? Which political party is responsible for simultaneous English-French translation in the House of Commons? Which party is responsible for allowing First Nations people to vote in federal elections without giving up their Indian status? If you guessed Liberal Party or CCF/NDP, you would be wrong. All of these “firsts,” which most people in contemporary Canada would consider hallmarks of a “progressive” political party, are associated with the federal Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Canada. While firsts don’t tell the entire story of a political party, it is nonetheless significant that this party embraced a platform broad enough for people such as Ellen Fairclough, James Gladstone, Lincoln Alexander, Douglas Jung, Flora MacDonald, and Barbara McDougall to find a home in it in the latter half of the 20^th century. The party’s “big tent” had room for a variety of forms of conservatism.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada existed under that name from 1942 to 2004, and there are still provincial parties named “Progressive Conservative” in Manitoba, Ontario, and all four Atlantic provinces. From 1942 until 1993, it was Canada’s main party of the right, until it was challenged by the newly formed Reform Party of Canada, which became the Canadian Alliance. Over the course of its history, those on both the left and the hard right have questioned whether the Progressive Conservatives—or Tories as they were often called—were in fact a conservative party, or whether they were “Liberals in disguise” or “Liberal lite.” Indeed, for most of the late-19^th century and the 20^th century, the various incarnations of the Conservative Party avoided embracing a hard ideological line, in an effort to compete with the Liberals for the votes of Canadians who hewed to the political center. While the Liberals were the classic “brokerage party” that tried to reconcile the competing interests of various elements of the electorate (regional, English/French, etc.), the Conservatives often tried to emulate this behavior. Kenneth Carty argues they were less successful at this, more often acting as a “catch-all party” that tried to knit together the groups who weren’t reconciled to the Liberals’ brokerage package (Carty 2015). Moreover, as Richard Johnston notes, while the Progressive Conservatives’ brokerage or catch-all approach did periodically yield huge electoral victories, these wins were often followed by spectacular collapses one or two elections later, as their voting coalition blew apart (Johnston 2017).

Nevertheless, during the years of its existence, the Progressive Conservative Party was the political party where most MPs and Senators who considered themselves to be right-of-center found their home, and with whom most Canadians who considered their political views to be right-leaning would at least park their votes—along with, for a period, the fringe Social Credit/Créditiste party, which is a subject all its own (Finkel 1989; Macpherson [1970] 2013; Pinard 1975; Stein 1973)!¹ While their conservative credentials were questioned by some political theorists—and voters—at the time, the members of the various Progressive Conservative parties at the federal and provincial levels definitely thought of themselves as conservatives. The majority of party members, and certainly their parliamentarians, considered the thought of joining the Liberals abhorrent. However, many of them were also passionate about the “progressive” part of their party’s identity.

This article explores what it meant to be a Progressive Conservative in Canada, and how the understandings and manifestations of the “progressive” part of that name evolved over time. This includes a consideration of the phenomenon referred to as “Red Toryism,” a term that emerged in the late 1960s. I argue that a shifting constellation of progressive and Red Tory values and ideals had significant impacts on the PC Party’s platforms and policies. But this progressivism was neither the sole nor necessarily the dominant strain shaping the party’s approach. There were also various forms of conservatism, much as those further to the right may have questioned the PCs’ “true blue” credentials. As many have observed, the party was also shaped by a substantial dose of populism, which cut across left-right lines. George Perlin’s The Tory Syndrome (Perlin 1980) notes how the self-identification of a major cohort of PC Party members as “outsiders” to Canada’s traditional elite and “establishment” has informed the party’s identity. My focus here is less on the populist dimensions of the PC Party—important though they are—and more on how it struck a balance between progressive and conservative viewpoints. Throughout the latter half of the 20^th century, we can see evidence of how the progressive wing of the PC Party of Canada acted as a check on the forces of business liberalism, neoliberalism, libertarianism, and other less compassionate forms of conservatism within the party.

Understanding Progressive Conservatism and its role in Canadian political life is essential to more fully explaining how Canadian federal politics and policies evolved in the latter half of the 20^th century, and its legacies play an ongoing role in shaping a distinctive Canadian political culture into the 21^st century. This is not to downplay the importance of theoretical and statistical analysis-driven scholarship on how Canada’s party system has evolved over time. Nor is it to challenge the importance of the brokerage politics thesis, which holds that Canada’s main political parties in this period largely sought to downplay ideology and avoid making moral issues the subject of partisan stances (Carty 2015; Farney 2012; Johnston 2017). Leadership certainly did matter, and Perlin aptly observes how emotional responses to party leaders and those who aspired to party leadership, and perceptions of their leaders’ capacity to win elections, often drove intra-party PC conflict more than did ideological divisions (Martin, Gregg, and Perlin 1983; Perlin 1980). However, to understand more deeply how brokerage politics worked in this period, we need to grapple with how elements of the Progressive Conservative Party sought to make their party seem welcoming and open to would-be candidates and voters who held progressive views on a range of issues—and to broaden support beyond the party membership and core voter base. Brokering interests wasn’t solely about the interests of different regions of the country. It was also about tapping into constituencies, such as Canada’s youth, women, new immigrant communities, and urban voters, for whom a more progressive stance on their issues might make the Conservatives more appealing at the polling booth.

There are key policy areas where one can detect the progressive strain of Progressive Conservative approaches, although this shifts over time: the role of the state in the provision of social welfare and the extent of these supports; the degree and nature of state intervention in the economy; the Canadian constitution and identity-related policies, especially the question of the accommodation of Quebec and French Canada’s distinctive identity, language, and character; the response to 1960s and 1970s social movements, and particularly to identity politics related to gender and sexual orientation, coupled with abortion rights and capital punishment. While in some respects, Progressive Conservatives found common cause with the Liberals and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)/New Democratic Party (NDP) on these issues, they often differed on how policies should be crafted and implemented, or about their scope—for instance on issues related to the extent of the state’s direct intervention in the lives of Canadians. On issues related to Canada’s heritage and national identity, or its place in the world, especially the connection to Britain and the Commonwealth, they were more inclined to stress the need for an ongoing connection. But as with so much in history, the degree of emphasis on any of these elements and the importance attached to them shifted over the decades. Moreover, individuals who self-identified as progressive often differed on the issues on which they took progressive standpoints and those on which they took conservative positions.

Methodologically, this article is rooted in the discipline of history. It relies heavily on archival research, coupled with the relevant secondary literature and historical newspapers. Its genesis is in a broader—and ongoing—biographical project about former Prime Minister Joe Clark, for which I have conducted more than a hundred oral history interviews, including those with past PC party leaders, parliamentarians, and party members. Part of my goal is to recover and analyze what Progressive Conservatism meant to people who self-identified that way, especially members of the federal party’s leadership and caucus. This is a term that had deep meaning to some, without it detracting from their identity as conservatives, and I approach the analysis that follows with their self-perceptions in mind.

The Port Hopefuls and the Origins of “Progressive” Conservatism

What were the origins of “Progressive Conservatism”? For that story, we need to look back to Depression-era and Second World War-era Canada. From 1930 to 1935, Canada was governed by the Conservative Party led by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett. Bennett was willing to directly involve the state in key sectors such as broadcasting (creating the Canadian Radio-Broadcasting Commission in 1932), and the money supply and exchange rate (creating the Bank of Canada in 1934). However, he had been averse to major state-funded social welfare measures as a response to the Depression until a last-minute conversion in his final months in office (Glassford 1992, 153–166). A free enterprise ideology coupled with a healthy dose of imperialism continued to be pillars of the party into the early 1940s. The Conservative Party had been largely shut out of francophone Quebec seats since the First World War, owing to its pro-conscription stance. The efforts of new leader Dr. Robert Manion in the 1940 election to adopt a friendlier approach to Quebec, including a more conciliatory stance on mandatory military service, failed to yield results and, as a result, Manion resigned.

The new party leader, former Prime Minister Arthur Meighen, held firm that the path to victory would be through the traditional Conservative values of free enterprise and imperialism—including compulsory military service for overseas service. Meighen neglected to consider the growing strength of the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in his 1942 by-election bid to get into the House of Commons. He was defeated by Joe Noseworthy, whose campaign spoke to the desire for social welfare measures for Canadians and the conscription of wealth (Granatstein 1967, 107). With polls showing growing strength for the CCF, especially among youth, a group of Conservatives centered on James MacKerras (JM) Macdonnell believed that the party needed to develop a new approach. They therefore organized a “Round table on Canadian policy” to be held in Port Hope, Ontario, in September 1942, whose purpose was “to demonstrate to both the party and the public that Conservatives could think progressively” (129).

The “Port Hopefuls,” as they came to be called, sought to broaden the party’s tent and attract new voters. While still believing in the need to resist socialism and defend free enterprise, the conference resolutions included proposals for government-run social security programs including unemployment insurance, adequate payments for the maintenance of those deemed “unemployable,” retirement insurance, increased Old Age Pensions (OAP), and “a national contributory and equitably financed system of medicine” (Granatstein 1967, 134). The Port Hope resolutions wanted government authority to be exercised to protect against abuses by price-fixing combines, monopolies, and patent cartels, stressing that “if private enterprise fails or is unable to serve national interests, governments should directly or indirectly develop in that field socially useful undertakings” (209). Heath Macquarrie, a Prince Edward Islander firmly in the progressive wing of the PC caucus as both MP and Senator from 1957 to 1994 (his memoirs were titled Red Tory Blues), considered Port Hope a key moment in the intellectual development of his party, and praised the delegates’ collective wisdom (Macquarrie 1992, 49).

These policy stances did not appeal to Arthur Meighen but were viewed more positively by a potential new leader favored by the Port Hopefuls: long-time Manitoba Premier John Bracken, who was then leading a Liberal Progressive government. Indeed, among Bracken’s conditions for becoming leader was that the party rebrand itself as the Progressive Conservative Party. While party members weren’t willing to accede to this condition before their Winnipeg leadership convention, they did so immediately after Bracken was chosen, and adopted many of the Port Hope resolutions as part of their platform (Granatstein 1967, 134–138).

Although the Progressive Conservatives appeared to have made a major shift toward the center-right, if not the center-left, at Winnipeg, they were overtaken by wartime developments, and policy shifts by the Mackenzie King-led Liberals. The King Liberals followed the PCs with their shift to a social welfare platform, including legislation to create family allowances (Granatstein [1975] 1990, 249–288). After victory in Europe, the PCs unwisely decided to campaign on conscription for the Pacific War in the federal election, scuppering their chances for electoral victory. The disappointment of the 1945 election, coupled with the success of the Ontario provincial PCs who formed a government in 1943 under the traditionalist conservative George Drew, seemed to have dashed the hopes of the progressive wing.

From Drew to Diefenbaker

Overall, the period between 1945 and 1956 was not one when the national Progressive Conservative Party embraced the new progressive thrust promised at Port Hope. Bracken led the party from 1945 to 1948, as Denis Smith puts it, “conscientiously but without inspiration, a drab leader with no clear sense of purpose” (1995, 155), until he was persuaded to step aside. George Drew, who won the party’s 1948 federal leadership race, was a conservative of the old Toronto school, deeply enmeshed in Toronto’s financial elite, and the next two elections saw his party utterly dominated by the Liberals.

Elements of the progressivism that had kindled Port Hope remained, most notably in leadership hopeful John Diefenbaker, a Saskatchewan MP. In the 1944 debate on family allowances in the House of Commons, he stressed that “I want to see brought into parliament legislation that will banish the sense of fear and insecurity among the poor of the country.” He strongly supported the measure on the basis that it would contribute to equal opportunity, and further declared that

We have a terrible responsibility for the post-war period, sir. This parliament should make available moneys by grants to the provinces – and it has the power – to establish health units, hospital units, to set up libraries, to provide for better schools and to establish a system of scholarships. … Make it possible to establish low-cost housing …²

Diefenbaker was clearly not a Conservative hesitant about using the power of the state for progressive goals. From the opposition benches, Diefenbaker contributed to the debate over the King government’s 1946 legislation to create a distinct Canadian citizenship by arguing it should include a bill of rights “so as to assure the maintenance and preservation of democratic and traditional processes of liberty and of equality under the law of all Canadian citizens without regard to race, creed or colour.”³ His 1948 campaign against Drew for the party leadership promised traditional support for free enterprise and initiative, but also argued that the party should “accept social security as a means not an end and … launch a social security contributory plan while continuing to provide adequately for the aged and afflicted” (Smith 1995, 173). When Drew resigned as leader in 1956 citing exhaustion, party members chose Diefenbaker to succeed him.

One must bear in mind that in the 1950s, it was the federal Liberal Party, more than the PCs, that was strongly associated with big business, including American business interests. The Liberals’ handling of the 1956 pipeline debate—over a loan to the American-owned Trans-Canada Pipe Lines company—was critical to changing public views of the “the Government Party” (Juillet and Bernier 2020, 274–276; Whitaker 1977, 184, 420). In the 1957 election, the Diefenbaker-led Tories promised to preserve and increase Canadian ownership of industry and resources. Their plans for natural resources development embraced the use of the state for national purposes, with a “Northern Frontier” policy which included road construction to enable the tapping of northern natural resources—in government, this became their Roads to Resources program (Smith 1995, 226–230).

The Progressive Conservatives of 1957 promised reduced taxation, resistance against communism, and assistance to small business. But they also promised continuity with a welfare state model that had been the hallmark of Liberal government social policy since the Second World War (PC Party 1957, 9). Once in office, the PCs increased the old age, blind, disabled, and veterans’ pensions, and reduced the residency period required to qualify for old-age security (Macquarrie 1992, 155; Smith 1995, 270). In subsequent ministries, Diefenbaker’s government expanded unemployment insurance benefits for seasonal workers, and in 1961 it appointed Justice Emmett Hall to chair the Royal Commission on Health Services, whose recommendations ultimately led to Medicare (Boychuk 2008, 132–133).

Diefenbaker’s advocacy for civil liberties and human rights was translated into legislation with the creation of the Bill of Rights in 1960 (Lambertson 2005, 360–371; MacLennan 2003, 126–150). While Britain did not have such an explicit legislative mechanism for protecting civil liberties, for Diefenbaker and other progressively minded conservatives of his era, including historian W.L. Morton and constitutional scholar Eugene Forsey, the defense of civil liberties and ideas of social justice were core to the British parliamentary traditions that they sought to preserve as part of their Canadian conservatism (Taylor 1982). Although passed as a statute instead of being entrenched into the constitution, and critiqued by many on the left for its relative weakness, the Bill of Rights went further than any previous government had done, prohibiting federal government discrimination on several grounds, including sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. Diefenbaker’s government also changed the long-standing policy requiring that First Nations people give up their Indian status in order to gain the vote in federal elections. While his actions were rooted at least partly in a desire to salvage the future of the Commonwealth as a viable organization, Diefenbaker tried to get the South African government to alter its apartheid policy, to overcome opposition from the nonwhite Afro-Asian member states to its quest for readmission (Manulak 2022, 252–276)—steps that later earned him a reputation for championing an anti-apartheid stance.

Diefenbaker’s PCs were notable for a number of progressive “firsts.” He named Ellen Fairclough to Cabinet as Secretary of State in 1957, the first woman to gain a seat around that table, and appointed James Gladstone, a past president of the Indian Association of Alberta, as the first Senator with Indian status in 1958. Douglas Jung, the first Chinese Canadian MP, was part of the wave of MPs elected to Diefenbaker’s first government. Diefenbaker’s “One Canada” was a vision of a country in which hyphenated Canadianism would become a thing of the past (it was both the title of his memoirs and the theme of the 1957 campaign). It was rooted at least in part in his opposition to how it had historically marginalized people such as himself on the basis of their ethnic origins. However, his universalizing approach to Canadian identity put him on the “wrong” side of one of the emergent progressive issues of the 1960s. Diefenbaker didn’t believe that Quebec or French-speaking Canadians should have any special status, or that the French language should have an enhanced status beyond that defined by the constitution. His government did introduce simultaneous English-French translation into the House of Commons, but in a decade marked by Quebec’s Quiet Revolution and calls to explicitly frame Canadian identity policies around bilingualism and/or biculturalism, Diefenbaker was increasingly viewed, even by elements within his own party, as reactionary and conservative on one of the central progressive, identity-based issues facing the country. What defined a “progressive” in Canada was changing, and Diefenbaker was no longer on the cutting edge within the PC Party.

Sixties Progressive Conservatism—the Camp/Stanfield Era

The loss of their majority in 1962 and then defeat in 1963 brought the knives out for John Diefenbaker in the PC Party. It had broken through in seat-rich Quebec in 1958 with the backing of Premier Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale machine, only to be reduced to 14 seats in the province in 1962 – well behind the Ralliement Créditiste (the Quebec wing of the Social Credit party led by Réal Caouette). For some party members, this was a clear sign that the Progressive Conservatives needed to take a hard look at their conception of Canadian identity, and the place of Quebec, French Canada, and the French language within it. The few remaining francophone Quebec PC MPs, led by Léon Balcer, called for a leadership review. But their efforts to force such a vote at the party’s national convention were stymied in close votes by Diefenbaker loyalists. Key PC francophones then quit the caucus and opted to sit in the Commons as independents (MacDonald and Stevens 2021, 104–108; Macquarrie 1992, 204–208).

But this was not simply a French-English split. The youth wing of the party, including the Progressive Conservative Student Federation (led at the time by a young Joe Clark, from Alberta), was distressed by the declining appeal of the party among young Canadians and knew this would be a growing problem in baby boom-era Canada (McGillivray 1965; Trueman 1965). The new party president, Dalton Camp, was sympathetic to this viewpoint. But Diefenbaker and his supporters continued to oppose initiatives that seemed likely to gain support in Quebec, such as the new maple leaf flag (McGillivray 1965) and did so by championing a Canadian identity that was firmly anchored in Britishness (Igartua 2006, 182–188). A growing cohort of party members, centered on Camp, grew convinced that a new approach and new leader were needed. At the party’s 1966 national convention, these forces coalesced to support Camp’s reelection bid for the party presidency, which he explicitly framed around the need for a formal party leadership review mechanism. His win was followed by a motion that a leadership convention be held in 1967.

The drama surrounding Camp and Diefenbaker was not solely about leadership, personal loyalties, and emotional attachments, although these were certainly major considerations for convention delegates (Perlin 1980, 76–83). It was also deeply connected to broader questions around what the party wanted to be, and what it would stand for. Taking a page from the Liberals’ Kingston conference (Bryden 1997, 53–60)—and their own Port Hope one—Camp organized “thinkers conferences” in Fredericton in 1964 and at the Maison Montmorency in Quebec in 1967 to try to bring new blood, perspectives, and ideas into the party (Clark 1971). Both events were notable for the prominent Quebecers who were invited, such as Claude Ryan, Marcel Faribault, and Marc Lalonde, as well as other key intellectuals, such as Marshall McLuhan. The Montmorency Conference ultimately endorsed a conception of Canada as being composed of two founding peoples (termed “deux nations” in French⁴), though it was framed in sociological terms and not in terms of special constitutional status for Quebec. While Diefenbaker rejected this concept, his rivals at the 1967 party leadership all supported it to varying degrees, including the ultimate victor, Nova Scotia premier Robert Stanfield (McRoberts 2019, 55).

The leadership’s acceptance of the “deux nations” concept of Canada, while winning them the endorsement of Le Devoir editor Claude Ryan in 1968, was not enough to win over Quebec voters, especially once Quebec-based Pierre Trudeau took over as Liberal leader. Trudeaumania was a setback for both the PCs as a whole and for the more progressive form of conservatism that Stanfield supported. Many of the star progressive PC candidates who ran in urban and Eastern Canadian ridings went down to defeat, leaving Stanfield largely surrounded by Diefenbaker loyalists, although a few notable Maritime progressive voices survived. Nevertheless, Stanfield embraced a more open approach to the French language. He supported the Official Languages Act and official bilingualism policy that the Liberal government put forward and stared down a renegade rump in his party—including Diefenbaker—who had voted against the legislation on second reading (Stevens 1973, 230–234). His party later lent support to the multiculturalism policy presented in the House in 1971.

Stanfield and Diefenbaker differed on their approaches to Quebec and official languages, but their respective conservatisms each had elements of what was starting to be referred to as “Red Toryism” in the late 1960s and 1970s.⁵ In 1965, philosopher George Grant published a landmark work entitled Lament for a Nation. For Grant, the 1963 defeat of John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative government signaled the end of Canada’s ability to continue to exist as a nation and resist the hegemony of American-style individualistic economic liberalism, which he believed would ultimately undermine Canadian political sovereignty as well. There is a direct line between Grant’s book and a 1966 scholarly article by political scientist Gad Horowitz in which he coined the term “Red Tory” to describe a variant of Progressive Conservatism that encompassed the views espoused by Grant in the 1960s (Horowitz 1966; Taylor 1982, 144–148).⁶ As Horowitz put it,

At the highest level, the red tory is a philosopher who combines elements of socialism and toryism so thoroughly in a single integrated Weltanshauung that it is impossible to say he is a proponent of either one as against the other. Such a red tory is George Grant, who has associations with both the Conservative party and the NDP, and who has recently published a book which defends Diefenbaker, laments the death of “true” British conservatism in Canada, attacks the Liberals as individualists and Americanizers, and defines socialism as a variant of conservatism (each “protects the public good against private freedom”).

(158–159)

Horowitz’s original conceptualization of Red Toryism—admittedly vague—was rooted in the acceptance of an interventionist state, particularly on matters of national economic development (such as the creation of the Canadian National Railway, the Bank of Canada, and Ontario Hydro), but also in matters of social welfare, because of tory communitarian conceptions of responsibility for the less fortunate members of society. These interventions were part of what helped Canada maintain its independence and nationality from being utterly subsumed by the American behemoth (Horowitz 1970).

The term “Red Tory” fit nicely with many aspects of 1940s-1960s Progressive Conservative policies, as well as those of earlier incarnations of the party. Considering the phenomenon in the early 1980s, journalist and essayist Charles Taylor traced its lineage back through key figures such as political scientist Stephen Leacock, historian W.L. Morton, and constitutionalist Eugene Forsey. In each of their writings, Taylor identified an endorsement of a conservatism that emphasized the mutual obligations of all classes within the broader political community, and the acceptance of some degree of state involvement to provide for basic needs. In his 1982 book Radical Tories, he proposed this definition: “Put simply, red tories are conservatives with a conscience. Respecting tradition and order they are also concerned with social justice and willing to use public power to curtail private greed” (Taylor 1982, 115).

But the Red Tory concept remained nebulous, and popular understandings of the term soon shifted beyond its economic nationalist and social welfare state roots to encompass a broader range of “progressive” forms of conservatism. Part of the shift was a response to the changing nature of social movement activism. Until the 1950s, social movements on the political left were conceptualized around class and strongly oriented to economic issues, particularly the rights of the working class and organized labor. The 1960s and 1970s ushered in a wave of new social movements in Canada which viewed class as only one vector of oppression, alongside sex, race, sexual orientation, reproductive control, and other factors (Smith 2018, 58–59). What was defined as “progressive” in Canada also began to shift from economic issues to identity-based questions such as the rights of women, racialized minorities, Indigenous peoples, homosexuals (in an era that predated the LGBTQ+ acronym) and national minorities, including francophones.

Robert Stanfield’s leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party from 1967 to 1976 emphasized the party’s progressive credentials. On the social welfare side, he established a policy development process chaired by Trent University president Thomas Symons, an early highlight of which was the 1969 Priorities for Canada Conference held in Niagara Falls (Macquarrie 1992, 257; McMillan 2016, 43–51). One of the key issues discussed was a proposal for some form of guaranteed (or minimum) annual income, as a response to concerns about poverty. Although not formally adopted by the party, the concept was given a thorough airing, with promises of further study, which helped make the party appealing to progressively minded students such as Hugh Segal, and others who later ran for the party in 1972 (Segal 2019, 57–60).

The 1972 election yielded much more positive results for Stanfield and his brand of Progressive Conservatism. His party came within two seats of winning the most seats in the House and won a majority of seats outside la belle province (where it won a disappointing two seats). Reducing the Liberals to a minority, the more progressive Maritime members in his caucus now had new allies such as Kingston MP Flora MacDonald, Toronto MP Ronald Atkey, and Alberta MPs Douglas Roche and Joe Clark. Profile pieces of prominent “Red Tories” appeared in major newspapers, emphasizing their acceptance of social welfare principles and other progressive causes such as aboriginal rights (to use the terminology from the period) (Balfour 1973). However, the PCs remained in opposition, and the Liberal government relied primarily on NDP support until it engineered its own defeat on the 1974 budget vote. The economically interventionist Progressive Conservative prescription of wage and price controls as a response to spiraling inflation and the stagnant economy (called stagflation) was mocked by the Liberals and rejected by the electorate, who gave Pierre Trudeau his third government (which adopted that very policy several months after the election).

To gauge Stanfield’s progressive leadership, one need look no further than his own party to see how he was perceived. The 1974 defeat wounded him, and the main opposition was marshaled on the party’s right wing. A group known as the Chateau Cabinet—all backbench MPs who had been excluded from critic positions—crafted a manifesto in 1975 critical of Stanfield for his support of bilingualism, accommodation of Quebec’s demands, and government intervention. They called for a “reappraisal of the permissive society” and a more restrictive approach to immigration (“Chateau group eyes” 1975; “Château group warms” 1975). The Chateau Cabinet attracted a fair deal of media attention, but progressively minded MPs continued to defend their stances. For instance, at a policy workshop on the environment held in Powell River, British Columbia in April 1975, Rocky Mountain MP Joe Clark highlighted how the party membership had endorsed creating a statute to require mandatory environmental impact statements for all major projects within federal jurisdiction. As he observed, “We are determined to examine environmental consideration at the front end of the decision-making process” (Clark 1975).

Red Toryism and the First Joe Clark Period

Among the key questions swirling around the 1976 leadership race for the Progressive Conservatives were who among the candidates might help them break through in Quebec, and whether the party would continue in the more progressive vein championed by Stanfield. Those preoccupied with the first question flocked in significant numbers to Quebec-based bilingual candidates Claude Wagner and Brian Mulroney, but also gave serious consideration to other candidates with strong French-language skills, like Clark. Chateau Cabinet types who rejected the progressive leanings of Stanfield rallied behind candidates such as Alberta MP Jack Horner and former Liberal defense minister Paul Hellyer. On the other side, candidates such as Flora MacDonald and Heward Grafftey espoused their progressive credentials openly.

In his analysis of the 1976 leadership race, George Perlin downplays the importance of ideology as the primary differentiator among the convention delegates, arguing that other factors were more significant. However, he acknowledges that people within the party did self-identify with ideological labels, and that those labels helped provide them with a moral justification for a decision—such as supporting a self-described “progressive” or “conservative” candidate (Perlin 1980, 173–181). Nevertheless, the convention dynamics showed that progressivism remained a significant element in the party, both in terms of the policy stances taken by various candidates, and in how the dynamics on the floor of the convention hall appeared to play out across the rounds of voting. The more right-leaning candidates, Horner and Hellyer, did not submit policy statements for inclusion in a booklet circulated to delegates. Those who did tended to hew to the common theme that the Trudeau government had stifled individual initiative, overspent, grown the bureaucracy to an unreasonable size, and taken an overly heavy-handed approach to the provinces. Almost all called for a rebalancing of federalism, seeking efficiencies in government, increasing the “freedom” of Canadians, and scaling back government spending. However, progressive elements were clearly evident as well. Brome-Missisquoi MP Grafftey stated: “I wish to lead a party and a government that is humane, decent, civilized and Progressive in social matters but truly Conservative in economy, fiscal, and monetary matters” (Candidates and the Issues 1976).

Even the more progressively minded candidates thought that not all social welfare programs should be universal, and that universality was part of the reason for the spiraling deficit. However, they emphasized the need for a government role to support those in need. Brian Mulroney stated “any civilization which respects itself admits to its basic responsibility of providing for its members who are in need. But what civilization has achieved greatness by treating all its citizens as needy?” Flora MacDonald argued that “Tories ever since Sir John A Macdonald have recognized that the use of government power is proper when it helps the poor and the disadvantaged. Our social responsibility requires no less.” Arguing that “policy decisions must have compassion for the unfortunate,” she believed that while the government could reduce costs arising from the universal payment of benefits, it should “provide more real help to those who are genuinely in need and who can benefit from assistance.” Joe Clark, aiming for a middle ground, argued that “we must bring the costs of social programs under control—not by penalizing the deserving or the needy, but by re-examining the principle of universality.” Even Claude Wagner, the “law-and-order” candidate viewed as leaning toward the political right, stated: “Compassion, within a framework of streamlining our social assistance commitments to better reflect the work ethic and the productivity requirement for growth and stability, must be the critical element of Progressive Conservative policies aimed at equalizing opportunity for all Canadians” (Candidates and the Issues 1976).

At the February 1976 convention in Ottawa, Paul Hellyer used his speech to lash out at the Red Tories (Benedict 1976). It did not win him the leadership. If anything, it seemed to journalists to have galvanized the progressive wing to ensure that a leader sympathetic to their views would win. Joe Clark, who placed third on the first ballot, was the beneficiary of that support. Media commentators argued that a pivotal moment during the balloting was when prominent Red Tory Flora MacDonald dropped out after disappointing results on the first two ballots and crossed the convention floor to support Clark (Newman 1976; Winsor 1976). Clark also picked up the endorsement of Red Tory candidates Grafftey and John Fraser, and, surprisingly, the support of his business-oriented caucus-mate Sinclair Stevens, vaulting him into second place on the third ballot. He later picked up the majority of Mulroney’s supporters to win the leadership on the fourth ballot (Humphreys 1978, 214–225). Progressivism was not the sole determinant of this leadership race. Factors such as personality, the candidates’ stances on Quebec questions, and parliamentary experience all certainly played roles. But its role was apparent in February 1976: candidates who were generally like-minded on social questions (and the delegates who supported them) coalesced behind Joe Clark over a succession of ballots.

Although often lumped in with the Red Tory wing of the party by the media, Clark did not initially embrace that mantle. But he had endorsed progressive stances with regard to environmental conservation, and his campaign materials highlighted how he had introduced a motion in Parliament calling for the recognition of aboriginal title (Clark 1976). As a Toronto Star editorial on February 24, 1976 pointed out, members of the Chateau Cabinet had “expressed serious doubts that the young Alberta MP’s basically left-wing, Red Tory views will be able to satisfy the hard core of disgruntled right wingers in the party.” Moreover, the media liked to point out that Clark’s wife, Maureen McTeer, had kept her own last name, a decision he fully supported, which was unusual for any politician in the 1970s, especially a Conservative.

As stagflation continued to haunt Canada, new social welfare programs did not figure in the agenda of Pierre Trudeau’s federal government. Joe Clark and a number of progressive-minded members of his caucus supported the motion by Liberal Justice Minister Warren Allmand to abolish capital punishment on its final reading on July 14, 1976.⁷ But as the next election approached, the main issues of contention between the parties were about the economy, federal-provincial relations, and national unity. The 1979 campaign run by the Tories wasn’t particularly progressive, but it didn’t have to be, as the electorate had soured on Pierre Trudeau. Simply offering a competent alternative was sufficient to win a minority government (Simpson 1980, 68–71).

Joe Clark’s short-lived government did not have much opportunity to define itself as particularly progressive. He did appoint prominent Red Tories (including David MacDonald, Flora MacDonald, Ronald Atkey and David Crombie) to key Cabinet portfolios, and a majority in Cabinet were known to oppose capital punishment. In line with their more conservatively oriented approach to the economy, Clark’s cabinet started to review the status of crown corporations, and initiated steps to dismantle or otherwise revamp ones they considered unnecessary or overly intrusive, including Lotto Canada and Petro Canada. Although Clark did not believe that the official languages policy could be the basis of national unity—by definition, he argued, it was a response to persistent language barriers—he strongly defended it as necessary in Canada. Clark’s vision of the country, conceptualized as a “community of communities,” was open to many ways of being Canadian—simultaneously allowing for those connected to their British or French heritage to celebrate it, while acknowledging that others may value other reference points in their identity. It also fit nicely with the more decentralized approach to federalism that Progressive Conservatives championed in these decades.

One of the most progressive elements of Clark’s government was its response to the Indochinese refugee crisis of the late 1970s. One of its earliest decisions, marshaled into action by Flora MacDonald and Ronald Atkey, was to dramatically increase Canada’s intake of refugees from Southeast Asia, more than quintupling the number that Canada had agreed to accept. Clark held firm in this policy despite opposition from right-wing groups such as the National Citizens’ Coalition, which called for a much more restrictive approach to immigration and attempted to cast these refugees as communist “agents from Hanoi” who would overwhelm the country’s absorptive capacity (Molloy et al. 2017; National Citizen’s Coalition 1979).

Clark’s government was preoccupied with the energy crisis and was attempting to negotiate with the provinces for an acceptable compromise solution. The elements of the energy policy that made their way into the defeated 1979 budget that toppled his government have been interpreted in various ways by scholars across the political spectrum. Clark planned to allow the price of oil to increase toward the international price—seen by some as a form of neoliberalism—and at the same time to impose an 18 cents per gallon fuel tax. I contend that the motivation and plan for the fuel tax included two progressive dimensions: it was intended to spur more energy conservation by Canadians to move the country to energy self-sufficiency; and it was coupled with a proviso for income-tested tax credits to reduce the costs of this policy for lower-income Canadians.⁸

Defeated in the 1980 election, the progressive contingent within Clark’s caucus remained influential. There were heated debates within the broader Progressive Conservative family about Pierre Trudeau’s approach to the constitutional patriation process of 1980–1982. Clark criticized Trudeau for his unilateral approach, but Clark and his party were broadly supportive of a number of aspects of the reformed constitution. For instance, they lent support to women’s groups in their ultimately successful effort to add a new section to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 28), which stated that rights applied equally to men and women, beyond what was already stated in the equality rights clause in section 15.⁹

The Mulroney Years and Beyond: Progressivism Persists, but Diminishes

Despite leading Pierre Trudeau in public opinion polls, Joe Clark called a leadership convention in 1983 after two consecutive national party conferences in which he was able to secure the support of only two-thirds of the delegates. The main calls for Clark’s resignation had come from the right wing of the party, including John Gamble and Peter Pocklington on the extreme right. But a hard-right approach was not the pathway to victory in 1983. Neither of these men, nor the more moderately right-wing, fiscally conservative Michael Wilson lasted past the first ballot. The final two ballots featured three men who were all, in various ways, considered to be from the progressive wing of the party, and had explicitly staked out policy positions during the campaign to make that clear: Joe Clark (who ran to stay on as leader, and tried to position himself as the only candidate who could protect the party from its immoderate right wing); John Crosbie (who made it clear he intended to defend social programs and foreign aid); and the ultimate victor, Brian Mulroney (Martin, Gregg, and Perlin 1983). Mulroney, who had been working in the corporate sector since the 1976 race, attracted most of the support of the political right, who were drawn to his statements about fiscal conservatism. However, he took pains to stress during the campaign that he was a “caring, compassionate Conservative on all social matters, who understands that government has a major role to play in looking after the disadvantaged and the dispossessed” (Martin 1983).

Mulroney’s term as Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993 saw some degree of progressivism persist within the party, particularly around issues of identity, individual and national group rights, the environment, and foreign affairs. The social welfare policy sector was the site of tension between the party’s progressive and fiscally conservative wings, as was, more generally, the idea of curtailing the federal government’s role in some programs. Economically, it was a decade of reduced direct federal involvement in the economy; here, we see an era when the PC’s progressive wing had only a modest influence on party policy.

The Mulroney government continued, and deepened, the approach of its Liberal predecessors on issues related to Canadian identity, and its movement away from an anchoring in Britishness. The Progressive Conservatives overhauled the Official Languages Act in 1988, making it stronger and more enforceable in many respects (Hayday 2015, 183–184). The multiculturalism policy of 1971 was codified into legislation in the 1988 Multiculturalism Act (Fleras 2021, 91–92). While critics debate the effectiveness of these policies, and the degree to which they overcome systemic barriers, both were firmly in line with a progressive, inclusive approach to Canadian identity.

Two hot-button issues of the socially conservative right—capital punishment and abortion—were also hotly debated during Mulroney’s term, and their ultimate outcomes show the persistent influence of the progressive wing of the PC Party. Mulroney upheld a campaign promise to allow a free vote regarding the reinstitution of capital punishment in 1987, but he spoke forcefully against it during the debate and the motion was defeated 147–127 (Mulroney 2007, 557–558). Although the majority of his caucus voted in favor of its reinstatement, a sizable number did not, including the vast majority of the Quebec caucus, as well as several high-profile cabinet members.¹⁰ The Supreme Court’s 1988 Morgentaler decision struck down the abortion law, creating another challenge. A significant anti-abortion segment of the Progressive Conservative caucus and Cabinet wanted the government to respond by passing new, stricter regulations, even if they would not survive a Charter challenge. Mulroney, who was both pro-choice himself and cognizant of a sizable pro-choice element within both his cabinet and the country, rejected this approach.¹¹ The replacement legislation was shepherded through its final stages in the House by pro-choice Justice Minister Kim Campbell, and included broad provisions that would allow a woman and her doctor to decide when an abortion was necessary (Campbell 1996, 164–168). Supported by most of the progressive PC members in the House (the vote of the Cabinet was whipped, but backbench MPs were allowed to vote freely), the legislation ultimately failed in the Senate, ironically because socially conservative senators voted against it on the basis of it being too liberal, and they were joined by the more ardently pro-choice senators, including Progressive Conservative Pat Carney and some of her caucus mates, who voted against it because they found the new provisions too restrictive (Carney 2000, 333–335)—which has left Canada without formal federal legislation on the issue.

Aspects of Canada’s foreign policy crafted by Mulroney and External Affairs minister Joe Clark reflected the ongoing progressive dimensions within the government. Most notable were Canada’s efforts to mobilize support in the international community, particularly within the Commonwealth and the G7, to put pressure on South Africa to abandon its policy of racial apartheid. It was a stance that was at odds with those of Republican United States President Ronald Reagan and Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, both of whom were convinced that Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid leaders were communists and should not be supported on that basis (Mulroney 2007, 460–464). Thatcher later quipped in her memoir that “As leader of the Progressive Conservatives, I thought he [Mulroney] put too much stress on the adjective as opposed to the noun” (Thatcher 1993, 321). After his release from prison in 1990, Mandela prioritized a trip to Canada, visiting there before he did the United States, and gave a historic address to Parliament in June 1990.

Progressive elements were also notable in Clark’s advocacy for the maintenance of official development assistance, which was reduced as a share of GNP, but not as severely as had originally been envisioned by Finance Minister Michael Wilson. In bilateral Canada-US relations, both Mulroney and Clark lobbied for action on factory sulfur emissions to reduce acid rain, which ultimately yielded the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement in 1991 (Munton 1997). On a more structural level, Clark, backed by Mulroney, insisted that senior officials in External Affairs accelerate the promotion of qualified women to heads of mission and other diplomatic postings.¹²

While one may debate the merits of the major constitutional reforms proposed during Mulroney’s tenure, two major elements of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords bear the clear imprint of the progressive wing of the party. The first, the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, gave special status to francophone Quebec, which was anathema to old-school conservatives and right-wing organizations such as the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada and the Reform Party of Canada. After the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, Joe Clark was redeployed from External Affairs to Constitutional Affairs. The agreement that he generated, although ultimately rejected by Canadian voters in the 1992 referendum, included constitutional recognition of the “inherent right to self-government within Canada” of Aboriginal peoples (Delacourt 1994, 301–364; Russell 2017, 418).

The years of Brian Mulroney’s prime ministership were not, however, a high-water mark for the influence of the party’s progressive wing. The impact of business liberalism on the PC government’s approach was clearly evidenced by the deficit-slashing budgets of Finance Minister Wilson and the privatization and dismantling of a series of crown corporations (Barlow 1990, 33–38; Khelfaoui 2020; Strain 2007; Wilson 2022, 135–137, 143–147). The signature policy of Mulroney’s term in office was the crafting of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, a move toward further integration into the North American economic market. While the agreement’s defenders believed it necessary to protect Canadian producers’ access to markets against a rising tide of US protectionism, its opponents saw this as George Grant’s predictions belatedly coming true: the sacrifice of a significant amount of Canadian economic sovereignty on the altar of American-style liberalism, a precursor to the loss of political sovereignty (Barlow 1990, 25–32; Barlow and Campbell 1991, 1–3). Indeed, Liberal Party election attack ads in 1988 featured the erasure of the Canada-US border on a map.

We can nevertheless see the influence of the progressive wing of the party even in sectors that might appear to herald the rise of business liberalism or neoliberalism. Benoît Bouchard recalls the impact of his progressively minded cabinet colleagues, such as Joe Clark, tempering the extent of budget cutbacks, who insisted that they should not “noyer le bébé avec l’eau du bain” (or “throw out the baby with the bathwater”) and neglect the other priorities of a responsible government.¹³ Raymond Blake notes that rumors about widespread cutbacks to Canada’s social welfare programs largely failed to materialize during the government’s first term, thanks largely to representations from cabinet ministers including Health Minister Jake Epp,¹⁴ backed by the Prime Minister (Blake 2009, 258–260). The changes that were made during Mulroney’s second term to programs in these sectors—such as replacing the universal Family Allowances program with a child tax benefit and clawing back some of the Old Age Security benefits paid to higher-income earners—were in fact common proposals among the progressive candidates for the 1976 party leadership. A more targeted social welfare network, as opposed to a fully universal one, was fully in line with the views of even bright red Tories. Even critics of the Mulroney government acknowledged that he did not gut the welfare state. Michael Prince and James Rice called it “a strategy of containment rather than neo-conservative dismantlement,” leaving behind a recognizable, albeit altered welfare state and social union (Prince and Rice 2007, 167, 174–175).

Yet the Progressive Conservative Party was still too progressive for some. This was manifested most dramatically in the formation of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987, and its insertion into Canadian federal politics, first under this name, and then as the Canadian Alliance from 2000 to 2003. The origins of the Reform Party are multifaceted. A significant part of its strength, always more influential in Western Canada than the rest of the country, stemmed from its grievance that the main national parties, and particularly the Mulroney-era PCs, were too Quebec-centric in their policies and approach to national issues, including the Official Languages Act, which the Reform Party initially opposed (Reform Party 1989, 22). This position would not have been out of place with a significant portion of 1960s- and early 1970s-era Diefenbaker supporters. The party took a hard line on criminal justice, calling for a return to capital punishment and “a justice system which places the punishment of crime and the protection of law-abiding citizens and their property ahead of all other objectives” (25). On social issues, Reform and Alliance supporters tended (with some exceptions) to be anti-abortion and anti-gay rights and in some cases opposed to the impacts of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

These new parties clearly spoke to a sector of the Canadian polity that was opposed to the Progressive Conservative (and Liberal) stances on both social issues and national identity policies. In the 1993 and 1997 elections (when the PCs were led by Kim Campbell and Jean Charest, respectively), Reform/Alliance results outstripped the PC seat count by wide margins (52 to 2, and 60 to 20). But there was clearly still an audience for Progressive Conservatism—the PCs trailed the Reform/Alliance vote count overall, but by much thinner margins than their seat tally would suggest (16.04% vs 18.69% in 1993, and 18.84% vs 19.35% in 1997). They garnered a larger vote share in all provinces from Quebec eastward and came close to even in Ontario. They slipped further behind, though, after Quebecer Jean Charest left the leadership. Returning leader Joe Clark was able to hold on to official party status with 12 seats in the 2000 election, but the party’s plunging vote tally in Quebec, without a Quebec-based leader, left them with half the votes garnered nationally by the Alliance (which won 66 seats).

The End of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party

The 2000 election results added momentum to calls to “(re)unite the right” among both Alliance and PC members who believed they had to end the split in the right-of-center vote that had allowed Liberals to win three consecutive majorities in Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. Could a merged party hold on to its progressive elements? Could common ground be found between the Progressive Conservatives, whose leader Joe Clark had served as grand marshal of Calgary’s Gay Pride parade (Slade 2001), and social conservatives who were part of the Alliance’s bedrock support? Clark resigned as leader in 2002. His successor, Peter MacKay, opened formal talks with representatives of the Canadian Alliance. Progressive Conservatives who supported the merger argue that they held on to much of what defined their party, such as the constitution of the new Conservative Party of Canada, which was largely identical to their new party’s constitution, and their preferred mechanism for leadership races.

But the name of the new party is significant. Loyola Hearn, one of the three PC representatives in the core negotiations, notes that it rapidly became clear that the inclusion of the word “progressive” in a merged party’s name was a nonstarter for the Alliance representatives.¹⁵ It was therefore dropped. While an overwhelming majority (90.4%) of PC Party members voted to support the merger (Heyman 2003), a handful of Progressive Conservative MPs and Senators, including Joe Clark, Lowell Murray, John Herron, and Rick Borotsik, were unwilling to join the new party, believing, among other things, that its stances on social issues and questions of national identity were ones they could not accept. Scott Brison, a gay PC MP who had been one of its most prominent members, crossed the floor to sit with the Liberals rather than alongside Alliance MPs who had indicated they would support recriminalizing homosexuality (Kennedy 2003). Although every election has its own dynamics, back-of-the-napkin math suggests that not all PC voters initially gravitated to the new Conservative Party of Canada in 2004—its 29.63% share of the popular vote was well down from the combined 2000 total of 37.68% of PC and Alliance votes.

Conclusion

The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was a major force in Canadian politics over its six decades of existence. Four of its leaders served as Prime Minister. It was the main rival to the Liberals for its first 50 years, and its persistence split the right-of-center vote in the 1993, 1997, and 2000 federal elections, helping the Jean Chrétien-led Liberals rack up three consecutive majority wins. The Progressive Conservative Party was more than the old Conservative Party relabeled, and it was not simply “Liberal lite.” Throughout these decades, the Progressive Conservatives tried to play the role of a big-tent national brokerage party as an alternative to the Liberals. I maintain that the presence of its progressive wing, particularly in its leadership, was a key dimension to broadening the party’s appeal for both voters and prospective candidates, a fact the more pragmatic right-wing members of the party grudgingly accepted as necessary to win power. “Progressive” Conservatives did not always embrace the full package of progressive measures of their times. It was possible, for instance, to have self-described Red Tories be in favor of social welfare programs, but also support capital punishment. But by and large, the self-described progressives of the Progressive Conservative party helped to shape the party’s policies in ways that appealed to constituencies that cut across regions—women, youth, urban voters, new immigrant communities, etc.—and thereby enhanced its potential to compete with the Liberals as a brokerage or big-tent party. While in office, they launched or maintained progressive policy initiatives and tempered what would have been more conservative policies had the party’s right wing had its way.

Those considered to be moderates or progressives were crucial to the modification of the party’s stances on Canadian identity, making it more open to Quebec’s aspirations for national recognition and to issues connected to Indigenous rights. They supported a more multicultural vision of the country, yet also believed in the importance of the country’s British and French heritage, which partly explains their affinity for foreign-policy initiatives involving the Commonwealth and the Francophonie (Hayday 2023, 271–273). The Progressive Conservatives did not see eye to eye with the Liberals on many issues, particularly the degree to which Canadian federalism should tilt toward centralized power in Ottawa as opposed to the provinces. While they were appalled by the proliferation of crown corporations in the postwar decades, and a key dimension of their conservatism was that there should be a stronger role for the private sector and private initiative, they carried on earlier legacies of the party that had been open to state intervention for the national good and applied this philosophy to support new post-Second World War social programs. They were more inclined than the Liberals or CCF/NDP, though, to find ways to reduce their costs to government and target assistance more at those in immediate financial need and unable to provide for themselves. On the emergent social movement issues of the late-20^th century, such as those related to sex, gender, sexual orientation, and race, they were not generally in the vanguard for change, but they were often more progressive—albeit cautious—in their stances than those on the political right, particularly once the Reform Party provided a new political home for those with socially conservative views.

Policies enacted or supported by 20^th-century Progressive Conservatives, including those in sectors like environmental protection and Indigenous rights, may seem surprisingly progressive for a right-wing or conservative party when viewed through a present-day lens. But this should not blind us to the fact that at the time this party was viewed by most as the main conservative political option at the national level. What it meant to be a Progressive Conservative for the better part of the mid-to-late-20^th century in Canada was often conservatism tempered with a hefty dose of a social conscience and the belief that the well-off in society had responsibilities to support the less fortunate. At the same time, this perspective was balanced by rhetoric championing freedom from excessive state intervention and the creation of a political and economic culture fostering more initiative by private citizens, and the belief that the federal government in Ottawa had accrued far too much power than was healthy for the country.

Understanding the political and social development of Canada throughout much of the 20^th and the early 21^st centuries requires grappling with how the forces of progressive and other variants of conservatism were jockeying for influence, both within their parties and also on the national and provincial stages. The Progressive Conservatives were not only trying to compete with the Liberals as a big-tent party by brokering regional interests, but also by encompassing a broad swath of social views that informed the voting decisions of groups such as women, youth, new immigrant communities, and urban voters, all of whom could be found across the country. These were people who fundamentally believed that they were conservative and would support parties that had that word in their name. Canadian political and social life was, and continues to be, shaped to a significant degree by that melding of progressive and conservative influences in a major partisan vehicle for right-of-center political views. Canada’s politics and policies were informed by a broadly shared understanding—particularly amongst the PC leadership, if less so amongst some of the partisan rank-and-file members—that to be palatable to more voters, Canadian conservatism needed to be tempered with a degree of progressivism. Canada’s partisan landscape has shifted since 2004, but memories and legacies of that political culture do persist in the present.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant. The oral history interviews that were conducted for this research followed a protocol approved by the University of Guelph’s Research Ethnics Board (REB#21-05-027).

Notes

1. See the articles by Jennifer Tunnicliffe and Kevin Anderson in this issue.

2. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 19th Parliament, 5th Session, Vol. 6: July 27, 1944, (John G. Diefenbaker), 5465; Smith (1995, 149–150).

3. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 20th Parliament, 2nd Session, Vol. 2: May 16, 1946, (John G. Diefenbaker), 1575–1576. José Igartua points out though, that many of Diefenbaker’s caucus-mates were critical of the citizenship bill for not giving enough special treatment to British subjects seeking Canadian citizenship. See Igartua (2006, 18–28). A search of Hansard reveals several occasions when Diefenbaker raised the bill of rights issue, including on January 29, 1948, February 12, 1948, March 24, 1952, and February 7, 1955.

4. The differing terminology reflected how English and French languages and communities in Canada attach different connotations to their respective words “nation” and “people/peuple.”

5. I explore the evolution of understandings of Red Toryism in greater detail in a forthcoming book chapter entitled “Red Tories Revisited: Progressive Conservatism in the Stanfield-Clark-Mulroney years.”

6. George Grant was a complex character, and his writings are the subject of a substantial body of scholarship, a full treatment of which is beyond the scope of this article. By the early 1980s, Grant’s anti-abortion stances put him at odds with many in the progressive camp of the PC Party—although as I note in this piece, there were certainly MPs, Doug Roche for example, who espoused views that, overall, were considered “progressive” but who occasionally sided with their more conservative brethren on individual issues.

7. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 30th Parliament, 1st Session, Vol. 14, July 14, 1976, 15322–15323. See also “Clark Stays Away” (1976).

8. The issue of how to reduce the impact of the excise tax was debated in several cabinet meetings, with the ultimate decision to have an income-tested tax credit. Cabinet conclusions, 15–16 November 1979. RG 2 Records of the Privy Council Office, BAN 2017-00087-6 File 50050-1979-37 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

9. This new section was also not subject to section 33, the override, or notwithstanding, clause. Author interview with Peggy Mason (September 9, 2019). Peggy Mason to Flora MacDonald, November 9, 1981; Peggy Mason to Rick Clippingdale, November 16, 1981; Peggy Mason to Jake Epp, November 26, 1981, MG 26 R, The Rt. Hon. Joe Clark Fonds, Series 4–5 volume 7, file 2, Charter of Rights—Impact on Women 1980–1983, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

10. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 33rd Parliament, 2nd Session, Vol, 6: June 29, 1987, 7818.

11. Scholars such as James Farney (2012), David Rayside, Jerald Sabin, and Paul E.J. Thomas (2017) argue that up until this period, the Progressive Conservative Party sought to keep moral issues such as the legalization of abortion and homosexuality outside the bounds of partisan politics, considering them improper subjects for political mobilization. Farney notes that this was in part because laissez-faire conservatives thought this was not an area for state involvement. Rayside et al. also observe that this was because the party leadership wanted to keep these issues sidelined “for fear of inflaming public opinion, alienating voters, or dividing their own ranks” (19). Either way, the ongoing strong presence of progressives both at the top echelons of the Parliamentary caucus and in the party more broadly influenced how Mulroney approached issues; he tried to maintain a “big tent” approach. My interpretation of these events is also informed by what I was able to read in the still-classified cabinet and cabinet committee minutes from this period, to which I had access.

12. Author interviews with Jodi White (November 27, 2017), Lucie Edwards (November 24, 2022), Louise Fréchette (June 3, 2020), Si Taylor (August 12, 2019), and others.

13. Author interview with Benoît Bouchard (December 22, 2022).

14. Jake Epp, a Mennonite, is another example of a senior Progressive Conservative of this era who was on the progressive wing when it came to social welfare policy, but the conservative side with regard to abortion.

15. Author interview with Loyola Hearn (December 12, 2022).