Reform Party of Canada

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For the Reform Party that existed prior to Canadian Confederation, see Reform Party (pre-Confederation)

The Reform Party of Canada was a Canadian federal political party founded in 1987. It viewed itself as a populist party, but was also conservative. It was folded into the ideologically and fiscally conservative Canadian Alliance in 2000. During its time on the Canadian political scene, Reform only had one leader, Preston Manning.

1 Political roots and the party's creation
2 The party in the late 1980s
3 Controversial links with other groups
4 Electoral success
5 Changed fortunes in the 1990s
6 Disbanding
7 Provincial wings
8 Federal election results 1988-1997
9 See also
10 External links

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Political roots and the party's creation

In 1986, a conference called "Canada's Economic and Political Future" was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. This conference led to the formation of the Reform Party in the following 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. They believed the West needed its own party if it was to be heard. Their main complaints against the Mulroney government were its alleged favoritism 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.

The Reform Party was founded as a populist party to promote reform of democratic institutions. However, shortly after the 1987 founding convention, social and fiscal conservatives became dominant within the party, and pushed it far to the right. Their political aims were a reduction in government spending on social programs, and reductions in taxation.

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The party in the late 1980s

The party had its first assembly in 1987, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Preston Manning, son of former Alberta Social Credit Premier and Senator Ernest Manning, was acclaimed as the new party's leader when former Manitoba Liberal Party Member of the Legislative Assembly Stan Roberts, the only other candidate, withdrew from the race. The party fought in the 1988 federal election, but was never considered more than a fringe element, and failed to elect any of its 72 riding candidates. However, the party ran second to the governing Tories in many Western ridings and earned 2.1% of the total national vote.

In 1989, following the sudden death of John Dahmer, PC MP for Beaver River, Alberta, the Reform Party gained its first MP when Deborah Grey won a by-election. Grey had finished fourth in the 1988 election. As the party's first MP, she became 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. He would eventually become Reform's first (and only) federal Senator, remaining in office until his untimely death. Waters' appointment, following his election victory, has led some to describe him as Canada's first elected Senator.

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Controversial links with other groups

In the early 1990s, the party was controversially endorsed by extremist groups such as the Heritage Front and the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada (APEC). This was a significant blow to the party's image in many regions of Canada, and one from which they struggled to recover for many years.

While the Reform Party had similar views to APEC's on official bilingualism and the role of Quebec in the confederation, the reasons for the racist Heritage Front's endorsement were less direct. In fact, the Heritage Front simply viewed Reform as a vehicle they could infiltrate in order to steer it toward their views, a phenomenon to which many new political parties are somewhat vulnerable. A few individual party candidates did come under fire for having made racist statements; however, the Reform Party itself never proposed or endorsed a racist platform.

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Electoral success

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 only groups to fight against the accord.

The constitutional debacle, unpopular initiatives such as the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), together with a series of high-profile scandals, all contributed to the implosion of the Progressive Conservative "grand coalition" in the 1993 election. Atlantic Canada and Ontario moved to the Liberals, while Quebec moved to the Bloc Québécois. However, 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. It also did very well in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Besides taking over nearly all of the PCs' seats in the west, it also won several ridings held by the social democratic New Democratic Party. Despite the sharp ideological differences, Reform's populism struck a responsive chord with many NDP voters.

However, Reform did not do as well as hoped east of Manitoba. It only won one seat in Ontario (Ed Harper in Simcoe Centre, and even then by only 123 votes), and none in Atlantic Canada. It was still a Western protest party, but it finished second in the popular vote and won 52 seats. However, due to a quirk in the first past the post system, this was only enough for third place in the Commons, two seats behind the Bloc. Even with these disappointments, the 1993 election was a tremendous success for Reform. In one stroke, it had replaced the PCs as the major right-wing party in Canada.

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Changed fortunes in the 1990s

The arrival of the Reformers in Ottawa followed a long line of Western protest parties like the Progressive Party of Canada and Social Credit. Reform ran into the same problems those parties had had, as it wrestled with the tricky task of maintaining a populist ideology. In the 1997 election, Reform captured only eight more seats, bringing the party's total to 60. It became the Official Opposition with its solid Western base, but it failed to make any headway east of Manitoba. It failed to gain any traction in Quebec.

Disillusionment with the traditional political parties in general had been the impetus behind Reform's initial growth, but that growth was now felt to have stalled. The party's executive therefore launched a major rebranding effort: the leader got contact lenses and a new hair style; and, after working with a voice coach, began discussions towards the launch of a new pan-Canadian party. The party would use "United Alternative" ("UA") forums to bring grassroot Reformers together with Tories to create a small-C conservative political alternative that would convince the Ontarians and Atlantic Canadians to vote for them. This initiative was opposed by "Grassroots United Against Reform's Demise" ("GUARD"). Manning was supported by the more right-of-center "Focus Federally For Reform".

The outcome was the creation of a new party, the "Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance" (more commonly known as the Canadian Alliance). It fused about half of the Progressive Conservative policies, and half of Reform's policies. However, former Reform members dominated the new party, and it was widely seen as a renamed and enlarged version of Reform.

Manning stood in the first leadership race for the new party, but lost to the younger, more charismatic Stockwell Day, who was the Alberta Treasurer and Deputy Premier.

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Disbanding

In 2000, the Reform Party was disbanded; with no other obvious political home, most of its members joined the Canadian Alliance.

The creation of the Canadian Alliance, and its eventual merger in 2003 with the Progressive Conservative Party to form the new Conservative Party of Canada, alienated some of the old Reform populists, leading to the creation of a new "Reform Association of Canada".

A new initiative called "Bring Back Real Reform" has also been created by a very small group of original Reformers from Ontario, with the aim of bringing back a federal Reform Party. Under the tag "Operation Back to the Future", it was launched in Spring 2005 as an umbrella for all original Reformers across the nation who felt that they were still without a political home.

Most of these people were also members of GUARD, were anti-UA, and were generally unsupportive of the Canadian Alliance, seeing it as a political vehicle for a Tory takeover even though the Alliance was dominated by former Reform Party members.

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Provincial wings

The Reform Party of Canada had two official provincial wings, that were registered by the party to be kept in a mostly dormant state.

The Reform Party of Ontario ran only one candidate in each election to maintain registration, whilst the Reform Party of Alberta ran candidates in the first two senatorial elections.

There were also two unaffiliated provincial parties, the Reform Party of British Columbia and the Reform Party of Manitoba. While they had no official connection to the federal party, they shared a similar political outlook. Both provincial parties are now largely inactive.

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