The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC) (French: Parti progressiste-conservateur du Canada) (1867–2003) was a Canadian political party with a centre-right stance on economic issues and a centrist stance on social issues. The party was formed in 1867 and became Canada's first governing party under Sir John A. Macdonald, and for years was either the governing party or the largest opposition party. In 2003, the party membership voted to dissolve the party and join the new Conservative Party of Canada being formed with the members of the Canadian Alliance.
After 2003, several members of the Senate of Canada who opposed the merger continued to sit as members of a "Progressive Conservative" caucus, and the conservative parties in most Canadian provinces still use the Progressive Conservative name. Some PC Party members formed the new Progressive Canadian Party, which has attracted only marginal support.
Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was originally a member of the Conservative or "Blue" Party. But in advance of confederation in 1867, the Conservative Party took in a large number of right-wing leaning members who defected from the Liberal or "Red" Party. Thereafter, the Conservative Party was the "Liberal-Conservative" (in French, "Libéral-Conservateur") Party until the turn of the twentieth century.
The federal Tories governed Canada for over forty of the country's first seventy years of existence. However, the party spent the majority of its history in opposition as the nation's number two federal party, behind the Liberals. From 1896 to 1993, the Tories only formed government five times--from 1911 to 1921, from 1930 to 1935, from 1957 to 1963, from 1979 to 1980 and from 1984 to 1993. The party did, however, have the distinction of being the only Canadian party to win more than 200 seats in an election--a feat it accomplished twice, in 1958 and 1984.
The party suffered a decade-long decline following the 1993 federal election, and was formally dissolved on December 7, 2003, when it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the new Conservative Party. The Progressive Conservative caucus last officially met in early 2004.
Between the party's founding in 1867, and its adoption of the "Progressive Conservative" name in 1942, the party changed its name several times. It was most commonly known as the Conservative Party.
Several loosely-associated provincial Progressive Conservative parties continue to exist in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. As well, a small rump of Senators opposed to the merger continue to sit in Parliament as Progressive Conservatives. The Yukon association of the party was renamed the Yukon Party in 1990. The British Columbia Progressive Conservative Party changed its name back to the British Columbia Conservative Party in 1991. Saskatchewan's Progressive Conservative Party effectively ceased to exist in 1997, when which point the Saskatchewan Party was formed primarily from former PC Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) with a few Liberal Party MLAs joining them.
The party adopted the "Progressive Conservative" party name in 1942 when Manitoba Premier John Bracken, a long-time leader of that province's Progressive Party, agreed to become leader of the Conservatives on condition that the party add Progressive to its name. Despite the name change, most former Progressive supporters continued to support the Liberal Party or the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and Bracken's leadership of the Conservative Party came to an end in 1948. Many Canadians still simply referred to the party as "the Conservatives".
A major weakness of the party since 1885 was its inability to win support in Quebec, estranged significantly by that year's execution of Louis Riel. This problem was exacerbated in the Conscription Crisis of 1917. Even though the Quebec Conservative Party dominated politics in that province for the first thirty years of Confederation at both the federal and provincial levels, in the 20th Century the party was never able to be a force in provincial politics, being out of power starting in 1897, and ultimately dissolved into the Union Nationale in 1935 which took power in 1936 under Maurice Duplessis.
In 20th century federal politics, the Conservatives were often seen as insensitive to French-Canadian ambitions and interests and were never able to win more than a handful of seats in Quebec with a few notable exceptions:
It never fully recovered from the fragmentation of Mulroney's broad coalition in the late 1980s resulting from English Canada's failure to ratify the Meech Lake Accord. Immediately prior to its merger with the Canadian Alliance, it held only 15 of 301 seats in the Canadian House of Commons and never held more than 20 seats in Parliament between 1994 and 2003.
