Locating the Right in Canadian Political History

Readers of the American Review of Canadian Studies are no strangers to the study of the impact of the political right in Canadian politics.¹ Scholars in the Canadian academic community have long found parallels between the political right in Canada and its counterpart in the United States, particularly on the issues of race, personal freedom, gender, and equity. Most recently, these similarities were demonstrated in the right’s responses to new social movements, such as Idle No More and Black Lives Matter, and especially during the 2020 summer of protest across the US and Canada following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The merger in 2003 of Canada’s two major right-leaning parties, the venerable Progressive Conservative Party and the newer Canadian Alliance (which itself was successor to the Western Canada-based Reform Party of Canada) to create a new Conservative Party worried many commentators and academics. They feared a united right would win power and attempt to remake Canada from the liberal, rights-based nation it had largely become to something more in line with the objectives of the political right in the United States. The election of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2006 exacerbated these concerns.

The merger of Canada’s conservatives did not satisfy all on the political right, however. In 2018, the People’s Party of Canada, a new populist libertarian party located ideologically to the right of the Conservatives, was created. More recently still—and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—elements of the radical right orchestrated major protests across Canada. These included the “Freedom Convoy” that shut down much of Ottawa in early 2022 as well as numerous other attempts to rally Canadians against lockdowns and vaccine mandates, all in the name of personal freedom (Proudfoot 2023; Brewster 2019; Prince 2015).

In recent months, a number of issues that would traditionally be associated with the extreme political right have entered the public policy landscape of mainstream conservative and right-of-center political parties in Canada. At the top of the list have been attempts by conservative governments in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta to restrict Trans youth under the age of 16 from using their preferred names or pronouns at school without parental consent. There has also been considerable support for affirming the right of individuals to refuse mandatory health measures such as publicly mandated vaccines and for the state to refuse to fund gender affirming medical procedures. Additionally, there have been attacks on a range of institutions, from the Bank of Canada to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the World Economic Forum, as the political right attempts to capitalize on a sense of anger and aggrievement among Canadians. Immigration, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and “wokeism” are all narrated by the political right as threats to the national community (Argitis 2022; Tasker 2023; Yourex-West 2023). Some of these issues found majority support at the 2023 Conservative Party policy convention.

Given the state of Canadian politics and the increasing popularity of the federal Conservative Party, as reflected in public opinion surveys throughout 2023, it is an opportune moment to turn our attention to the political right in Canada in the period since the Second World War. The five articles that follow engage with various aspects of the political right and mainstream conservative politics in Canada. Collectively, they contribute to a better understanding of Canadian political history and demonstrate the multidimensional and complex history of the right in Canadian politics. The articles examine not merely what we might consider the fringe or radical right, but also mainstream conservative parties like the Progressive Conservatives and Social Credit, which won elections and formed governments at the national and provincial levels in the postwar period. As these articles demonstrate, there were obvious and clear connections as well as considerable differences among the various right-of-center groups and individuals who staked out positions on the political right in Canada. The political right has occupied a wide space on the Canadian political landscape since World War II and, given recent developments in the country, the following articles collectively serve to remind readers that the influence of the political right on both radical and mainstream politics is still very much a reality in Canada.

Canadian Politics and the Political Right

The right and the left of the political spectrum have been occupied in Canada since before 1867, even if what constitutes right and left have been in flux. Those on the right were often—but not always—associated with conservative political parties and those on the left have generally been—but, again, not always—thought to be found in the Liberal Party or in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which combined forces with the Canadian Labour Congress in 1961 to become the New Democratic Party. In truth, there has been less to distinguish Canada’s major political parties from one another than is generally understood.

In the generation after Confederation, party allegiances were, indeed, fluid. Even John A. Macdonald’s Conservative Party was known as the Liberal-Conservative Party until 1873, and when the Conservative Party was defeated in 1896, Wilfrid Laurier and the victorious Liberal Party left many of the policies enacted by the Conservatives in place. In fact, the old Conservative Party of Macdonald amended its official name in 1942 to become the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The name change built on the Toryism that had been evident in the brief Conservative governments of Arthur Meighen, in R. B. Bennett’s 1935 New Deal, and in Henry Herbert Stevens’ Reconstruction Party (1935–38), and was an attempt, if not a commitment, to embrace social welfare legislation coming out of World War II. The many speeches from post-1945 party leaders and from Liberal and Conservative prime ministers after 1945 reveal that the rhetorical distinctions separating “Liberal,” “Progressive Conservative,” “Conservative,” and CCF platforms was not always obvious.²

Prime ministers—whether Liberal or Conservative—more often agreed than disagreed on initiatives, especially in their common understanding of the meaning of Canada and the Canadian story. To a degree not fully appreciated, Conservative and Liberal policies and narratives about the nation have had very long life cycles, often overlapping government administrations and representing different parties and ideologies. Beginning with Mackenzie King, every Liberal and Conservative prime minister discussed repatriating and revising the constitution, the need for a new Canadian flag (though they disagreed over the design), the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the accommodation of differences, and prudent financial management, even if they each entertained different ways of achieving their objectives. As John A. Macdonald commented, political ideas are like fruit—and if the fruit is green, it is not fit to pluck—and premature picking means getting ahead of the people, a costly political error.³

Post-World War II political leaders of both the Conservative and the Liberal parties were not primarily preoccupied with ideology but rather with how to build solidarity and unity across the political, ethnic, linguistic, and regional communities that constituted Canada. Whether Liberal or Conservative, they contributed to the story of Canada as a modern, democratic, inclusive, and caring state that they hoped might inspire feelings of loyalty, promote civic virtue, and build political, economic, and social solidarity. However, both parties ignored the needs and aspirations of minority communities, not least Indigenous and immigrant communities, which remained marginalized and excluded from the mainstream of Canadian society until the late 1970s.

Despite their many similarities, both Liberals and Conservatives imagined themselves to be distinctive, viewing politics as a battle between competing partisan narratives and opposing worldviews, even if that aspiration was often more fiction than truth. Liberals have argued that Conservatives and Social Credit members (parties that occupied the political right), stood, in both instinct and interest, for privilege, oligarchy, and the retention of Canada’s colonial “British” status. To the Conservatives and Social Credit, the Liberals were agents of American republicanism—reckless reformers and anti-nationalists who, in their fascination with abstract theories of government, sought to undermine British parliamentary traditions, annex Canada to the United States, and engage (especially for Social Credit) with a corrupt and manipulative international order. Moreover, the Conservatives depicted Liberals as untrustworthy with the nation’s purse and a party that threatened the freedom of the individual. Like so many other lost causes, for much of the post-1945 period, conservatism and the political right came to be known largely through the narratives created by their political foes.⁴ Yet, the Liberal Party, which held power nationally for much of the postwar period, was acceptable to many on the political right. It was an open party that made room for the discontented in the new Canadian West and was popular with labor and the growing urban classes, and especially in Quebec. The Liberals were conservative, too, generally hesitant to open the public purse, and when the country’s fiscal situation became untenable in the 1990s, they embraced neo-conservative principles with a vigor that pleased many on the political right. Liberals were also small-c conservative given their emphasis on collectivism, corporatism, and an organic view of the state. Prime Minister Joe Clark, who led a right-of-center Progressive Conservative government (1979–80), has noted that historically there have only been a few significant differences between the two national political parties, though especially so in foreign policy. Party leaders on the political right, including the Progressive Conservatives and Social Credit, were less often brokerage parties in the tradition of the Liberals. They were ideological, and Social Credit, an ideologically conservative group that is considered in this issue, never won more than 12% of the popular vote or 30 seats nationally, but still thousands of Canadians cast ballots for them.

Liberalism, the Liberal Party, and its leaders have attracted considerable scholarly attention; the Conservative Party, its various incarnations, and other parties on the political right, much less so. The important and impressive C.D. Howe Series in Canadian Political History at the University of British Columbia Press, for instance, has published three books on Liberal politicians and thus far none on Conservative politicians.⁵ The Liberal Party itself has been the subject of numerous books and even though there have been a number of books and articles published on Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, many of them are polemics.⁶ Even less has been written about other elements of the political right, which in Canada is diverse, complex, and important.

The goal of this special issue is therefore to broaden our study of the political right and its place in post-World War II Canadian society. While social conservatives have attracted recent attention, they comprise only one part of the political right; Red Toryism and Blue Toryism are other elements that deserve closer study. In Social Conservatives and Party Politics in Canada and the United States (2009), political scientist James Farney has described three distinct types of conservatives: traditionalists, laissez-faire conservatives, and social conservatives. Traditional and Laissez-Faire Conservatives, which both have deep theoretical and philosophical roots in Canada and elsewhere, are not particularly interested in many of the current social issues, such as abortion and LGTBQIA2S+ rights. However, Social Conservatives argue that issues such as abortion, critical race theory, and questions of self-identity “create crucial political questions on which religious traditions often have much to say” (Farney 2009, 5).

As Farney contends, Social Conservatives at the federal level in Canada have been largely unsuccessful in changing social legislation, even if they have been successful in raising concerns, especially among progressive Canadians, that such rhetoric threatens the gains made in such areas as abortion and same-sex marriage. Although some commentators viewed the election of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper (2006–2015) as a triumph of ideological right, Social Conservatives in his party failed to reverse much of Canada’s progressive legislation. Even though Harper spoke the language of the political right, he was more partisan than he was ideologically committed to a radical right agenda. In launching a small-c conservative revolution, he talked incessantly about building on Jean Chrétien’s and Paul Martin’s legacy of limited government and balanced budgets. However, his government was no more fiscally conservative than theirs. In fact, from $190.7 billion in fiscal 2006–2007, federal spending under Stephen Harper jumped to $273.6 billion by 2015–2016, representing a 43% increase. Even if one allows for the sharp economic downturn in 2008–2009, real per capita spending rose by 15% in the Harper years, despite his rhetoric of fiscal prudence and debt reduction and his avowed predilection for a smaller, more limited role for the state. The federal deficit in 2009–2010 was $56.4 billion, which was a record high, that is until Justin Trudeau’s government’s $300 billion deficit during the coronavirus pandemic (Curry and Leblanc 2020, 1).

Social conservatives and the extreme right have had limited success designing the direction and policies of Canada’s right-wing political parties. Even Harper never allowed the social conservatives and radical right in his party to leverage their concerns about morality and religion into his government’s decision-making. Like all party leaders, he was focused on his party’s electoral fortunes, and he kept the radical right in check. That does not mean that they have been without influence or unimportant; quite the contrary, as this special edition of this journal demonstrates. Canada’s conservative movement has experienced dramatic upheaval, especially as new regional parties emerged in the West and Quebec in the early 1990s to eventually cast the venerable Progressive Conservative Party into the dustbin of history. The Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party (although different ideologically) destroyed the Progressive Conservative alliance that Brian Mulroney had built. While the Reform Party (later renamed the Canadian Alliance) seemed a likely home for social conservatives who were animated by such social issues as abortion and gay and lesbian rights, its leadership realized that running on moral issues would not lead them to power in Canada. When elements of the political right merged to create the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003, social conservatives remained a potent force within the party, but party leadership understood that campaigning on controversial social issues would not lead to effective political mobilization and winning control of the national government. It might be noted that the right recently has been engaged, first, in the promotion of the primacy or importance of the market as the most effective means of promoting democratic choice and individual freedom; second, in warning of the dangers of big government, especially of the extension of the welfare state; third, in highlighting the perils of increased immigration and accommodating new immigrants; and fourth, in arguing that institutions such as courts have taken power away from people and their legislators. These issues have become priorities of right-wing populists.

The Political Right in Post-World War II Canada: Diverse, Complicated, and Important

The articles that follow consider elements of the right in Canadian politics after 1939. Matthew Hayday explores the progressiveness of the Progressive Conservative Party, while noting that opposition to socialism and the defense of free enterprise have been characteristic of both Conservatives and Liberals. The Progressive Conservative Party, he maintains, attracted those who regarded themselves as right-of-center, but it was a party heavily influenced by what Gad Horowitz has described as “Red Toryism,” which supported social programs, favored immigration, and sought to deal with national unity often through the decentralization of the Canadian federal system. Not surprisingly, Hayday finds that the Progressive Conservatives were concerned about fiscal matters, but that their leaders argued that such matters had to be tempered with concern for the well-being of the less fortunate.

Daniel Manulak and Jennifer Tunnicliffe narrow the focus on the political right to matters of public policy. Manulak considers support networks and sympathy for white minority rule in southern Africa from 1975 to 1990 among those in Canada’s political right, including those in the Progressive Conservative Party. Tunnicliffe focuses on the introduction of new hate speech laws in 1970. Both authors present their topics as part of a wider conservative discourse on rights. In his study of Conservative members sitting in Parliament and, for a time, in the federal cabinet, Manulak contends that while these influential Conservatives opposed Apartheid and other forms of racial oppression, there were also ideologues who worried about the spread of communism and the plight of white minorities in South Africa, whom they often regarded as “kin.” Many Conservative MPs favored “evolutionary change,” however coded this term was, in South Africa. Tunnicliffe explores the opposition of mainstream political rights parties (Progressive Conservative and Ralliement créditiste du Québec, the Quebec wing of Social Credit) to the introduction of federal hate laws in the late 1960s as a way of understanding conservative notions of rights. Conservatives feared that individual civil liberties and political and civil rights, notably freedom of expression and democracy itself, would be jeopardized if the government legislated on any form of speech. Rights, they believed, belonged to individuals and not groups, and the proposed hate speech laws represented a violation of the tradition of British liberty in Canada.

Essays by Kevin Anderson and Asa McKercher consider elements of the right in Canada not associated with the Conservative Party. Anderson argues that Social Credit, a conservative political movement that came to Canada during the Great Depression and that was especially successful in British Columbia and Alberta, was not a fringe party at the national level in Canada. In the 1935 federal election, Social Credit won 17 seats (15 from Alberta) in the House of Commons, and as late as late as 1979, its various incarnations continued to win seats, particularly in Quebec. It never won more than 12% of the popular vote, but its rhetoric and messages co-existed alongside other common conservative ideas in Canadian politics. Anderson examines the decade following the Second World War and contends that Social Credit represents the “mainstreaming” of conspiratorial thinking in conservative circles that warned of a “tangible, purposive enemy” threatening the freedom of the individual Canadian. Social Credit speeches in the House of Commons preyed on Canadian anxieties about the dangers of a growing and powerful state, demonstrated best through the expansion of social security, the decline of Britishness in Canada, the decline of public morality, the fear of Communist expansion, and the creation of international institutions, especially those tied to international finance.

McKercher’s is the only article in this issue to focus on a single individual. In it, he turns to Ron Gostick, a far-right publisher, who warned throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as did many associated with the political right, of the dangers of socialism, communism, internationalism, and modernity. His rhetoric and publications paralleled those of rightist elements in the United States, and he provided inspiration for several radical right-wing activists in Canada who promoted antisemitism and conspiracy-laden thinking well into the 1980s.

Collectively, these essays consider the multifaceted dimensions of the political right in Canada and the distinctive ways in which right-of-center ideas, ideologies, and political parties have shaped modern Canada. They show, too, the importance of the political right in Canadian politics, an aspect of Canada’s political history that has been overlooked by scholars, perhaps because the political right, outside the Conservative Party in its various forms, has never formed a government at the national level. Even within the Progressive Conservative Party, the radical right has often found a comfortable home. The articles reveal too that some of the ideas promoted by what is often considered the fringe of political discourse have been, in fact, firmly embraced by individuals and groups within the dominant, mainstream Conservative parties. The political right has long been a factor in Canadian politics, and it remains so. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the role that the political right (even the radical right) and right-wing populists continue to play in Canadian political and cultural life. Although the nature of Canada’s electoral system and its party system has allowed party leaders to control extreme elements within their parties, populist outsiders and right-wing elements matter in Canada, and it is very likely they will continue to matter.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for instance, Richter (2013), Chapnick (2011), Nossal (2007), Farney (2009), and Behiels (2010).

2. On political parties, see Wiseman (2020), Johnston (2019), and MacKenzie (2014).

3. Quoted in McMillan (2022, 23).

4. A good example is Jeffrey (2015).

5. These three books include Donaghy (2015), Graham (2018), and Dutil (2021). UBC Press also recently published MacKenzie (2023) and Litt (2011).

6. See Jeffrey (2015), Englier (2012), Hurtig (2015), and Harris (2014). See also, “Forum” (2014).