The Reform Party of Canada () was a right-wing populist and conservative federal political party in Canada that existed from 1987 to 2000. Reform was founded as a Western Canada-based protest movement that eventually became a populist conservative party, with strong social conservative and fiscal conservative elements. It was initially motivated by profound Western Canadian discontent with the Progressive Conservative Party (PC Party) government of Brian Mulroney.
Led by its founder Preston Manning throughout its existence, Reform was considered a populist movement that rapidly gained popularity and momentum in Western Canada during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In addition to attracting social conservatives, the party was popular among Western Canadians who were disillusioned with Mulroney's perceived prioritization of Quebec (during his attempts to reform the Constitution) as well as fiscal conservatives who were critical of the Mulroney government's tax increases and inability to reduce the budget deficit. In a 1989 by-election, Reform won its first-ever seat in the House of Commons before making a major electoral breakthrough in the 1993 federal election, when it supplanted the PCs as the largest conservative party in Canada. In opposition, the party advocated for spending restraint, tax cuts, reductions in immigration, and wider reform of Canada's political institutions such as the Senate. In the 1997 federal election, the party attempted to make a national breakthrough by running candidates in all provinces and territories. Although they became the Official Opposition, a Liberal majority and disappointment with the lack of Eastern seats led many members to question the future direction of the party.
In an attempt to move beyond its Western Canadian regional base and broaden its platform to encompass ideas from Eastern Canada, the party changed its name to the Canadian Alliance in 2000. That same year, the Alliance lost an election to a third Liberal majority. In 2003, the Unite the Right movement culminated in the Alliance merging with the Progressive Conservative Party to form the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada. Reform's impact on the Conservative Party's leaders and policies has been significant; three of its four permanent leaders were once Reform Party members.
History
Political roots and background
Prior to World War I, Western Canada featured broadly the same political climate as the rest of the country, with a two-party system consisting of the Liberal and Conservative parties. Following the conflict, regional parties began to be seen as more effective at representing Western interests at the federal level, including the Progressive Party and United Farmers of Alberta, and later the Social Credit Party and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. This continued until the 1958 Canadian federal election, when the landslide victory of the Progressive Conservatives (PC) under Western populist Prime Minister John Diefenbaker largely eliminated Social Credit as a serious competitor in Western Canada (albeit its provincial branches in Alberta and British Columbia dominated their legislative assemblies until 1970 and 1991 respectively), and left political contests in the region largely polarised between the Progressive Conservatives and the CCF's successor, the New Democratic Party.
Social Credit continued to provide a nominal alternative to the Progressive Conservatives for right-wing voters, but from 1968 onwards the party would only successfully elect MPs in Quebec, and the 1979 federal election saw its complete collapse as a political force. Some former Social Credit members attempted to form the Confederation of Regions Party as another alternative right-wing party, with Western alienation (which had been largely ignored by Social Credit in their final years in favour of a focus on Quebec issues) as a key platform plank. While they made little headway against the Progressive Conservatives, who won another landslide victory in 1984, they had one of the stronger performances among the minor parties that year.
In May 1987, a conference called "A Western Assembly on Canada's Economic and Political Future" was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. This conference led to the formation of the Reform Party in Winnipeg in October of that year. The party's founding occurred as the coalition of Western Prairie populists, Quebec nationalists, Ontario business leaders, and Atlantic Red Tories that made up Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative Party began to fracture.
The party was the brainchild of a group of discontented Western interest groups who were upset with the PC government and the lack of a voice for Western concerns at the national level. Leading figures in this movement included Ted Byfield, Stan Roberts, Francis Winspear, and Preston Manning. A major intellectual impetus at the time was provided by Peter Brimelow's 1986 book, The Patriot Game. They believed the West needed its own party if it was to be heard. Their main complaints against the Mulroney government were its alleged favouritism towards Quebec, lack of fiscal responsibility, and a failure to support a program of institutional reform (for example, of the Senate). The roots of this discontent lay mainly in their belief that a package of proposed constitutional amendments, called the Meech Lake Accord, failed to meet the needs of Westerners and Canadian unity overall.
1987–1990: Foundation and early success
The Reform Party was founded in October 1987 at a convention in Winnipeg, Manitoba led by three principal organizers: Preston Manning, son of Alberta premier Ernest Manning; Stan Roberts, former Liberal Party MLA; and Robert Muir, former president of the Canadian Petroleum Law Foundation.Ellis, Faron. The Limits of Participation: Members and Leaders in Canada's Reform Party. University of Calgary Press, 2005. P22. On November 1, 1987, at the convention, Manning was unanimously named leader after Roberts left the convention in protest over the new party's finances.Ellis, 2005. P22. The party's delegates discussed a variety of topics to formulate policies such as calling for the party to endorse a Triple-E Senate amendment to be added to the Meech Lake Accord, advocating the addition of property rights into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and other issues such as "provincial resource rights, deficit reduction, free trade, economic diversification, welfare reform, and regional fairness in federal procurements". The convention briefly discussed the contentious topic of western separation, which was not a serious concern as most of the delegates rejected the idea and Manning stated that he would refuse to lead a western separatist party and went on to say "We want to tell the rest of the country not that the West is leaving, but that the West is arriving."
The party fought in the 1988 federal election, but was never considered more than a fringe element, and none of its 72 candidates won election. However, the party ran second to the governing Tories in many Western ridings and earned 2.1% of the total national vote. The party clearly identified itself as a Western-based political party in 1988 with its slogan "The West Wants In". The party advocated controversial policies such as its opposition to official bilingualism and multiculturalism and its opposition for distinct society status for Quebec, which all mainstream political parties at the time supported.
In 1989, following the sudden death of John Dahmer, PC MP for Beaver River in Alberta, the Reform Party gained its first MP when Deborah Grey won the resulting by-election. Grey had finished fourth in the 1988 election. As the party's first MP, she was named Reform's deputy leader, a position she held for the remainder of the party's history. Also in 1989, Stanley Waters won Alberta's first senatorial election under the banner of the Reform Party of Alberta. In 1990, he became Reform's first (and only) federal Senator, remaining in office until his untimely death one year later. Waters' appointment, following his election victory, has led some to describe him as Canada's first elected senator.
1991–1993: Breakthrough
In 1991 and 1992, support for Reform rose not only in Western Canada, but in other parts of Canada as well, including Ontario. The party took note of this new support and changed its position from being a Western-based political party to being a national party. However, it did not stand candidates in Quebec in the 1993 election, as there was little support from francophone Quebecers due to Reform's opposition to a distinct society clause for Quebec.
In 1992, the Mulroney government made another attempt at amending Canada's constitution. The Charlottetown Accord was even more ambitious than the Meech Lake Accord, but it failed to win support in a nationwide referendum. The Reform Party was one of the few groups to oppose the accord. The constitutional debacle, together with unpopular initiatives such as the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) and a series of high-profile scandals, contributed to the implosion of the Progressive Conservatives' "grand coalition" ahead of the 1993 election.
The Reform Party achieved a major breakthrough in the 1993 federal election. The Progressive Conservatives suffered the worst defeat ever for a governing party at the federal level, falling from 151 to only two seats, while the Liberals under Jean Chrétien won a majority government. Reform was the major beneficiary of the Tory collapse: with few exceptions, the PCs' Western support transferred en masse to Reform. It won all but four seats in Alberta and dominated British Columbia as well. The party also won four seats in Saskatchewan and one seat in Manitoba. Besides taking over nearly all of the PC seats in the West, Reform also won several ridings held by the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP). Despite sharp ideological differences, Reform's populism struck a responsive chord with many NDP voters who were dissatisfied with Audrey McLaughlin's leadership. Ultimately, Reform won 52 seats — just two behind the Bloc Québécois, which became the Official Opposition — and came second in the nationwide popular vote, with 16%.
However, Reform did not do as well as hoped east of Manitoba. It was entirely shut out of Atlantic Canada – a region where a much more moderate strain of conservatism has traditionally prevailed. Many Red Tory voters in both Atlantic Canada and Ontario were fed up with the PCs, but found Reform's agenda too extreme and shifted to the Liberals. Despite strong support in rural Ontario, vote splitting with the PCs meant that Reform won only one seat, Simcoe Centre. As it turned out, this was Reform's only victory east of Manitoba, ever.
1994–1999: In Parliament In one election, the Reform Party had effectively replaced the Progressive Conservative Party as the major right-wing party in Canada. Despite not forming the Official Opposition, the Liberals treated Reform as their main opposition on issues that were not specific to Quebec. When Bloc leader Lucien Bouchard's position as Leader of the Opposition granted him a meeting with visiting US President Bill Clinton, Manning was also given a meeting with Clinton in order to defuse Bouchard's separatist leverage.
Reform's ambitions of becoming a national party and spreading into the east, particularly into Ontario, were helped by the rise of Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris to power in 1995. Harris' Common Sense Revolution agenda shared much of Reform's fiscally neoliberal ideology, including deep spending cuts, privatization of social services, and tax cuts. The party continued to show its ties to Harris as a means to diminish support for the federal PC Party.