Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan

The Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan is a conservative political party in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Founded in 1905 by former Northwest Territories Premier Frederick Haultain, the party was first known as the Provincial Rights Party. In 1912, its name changed to the Conservative Party of Saskatchewan, and in 1942 it adopted its current name. Members are commonly known as Tories.

The party has formed government in Saskatchewan three times, first in a coalition government from 1929 to 1934, and then in consecutive majority governments from 1982 to 1991. The party was badly damaged by an expense fraud scandal in the 1990s. In 1997, the party went dormant when much of its membership migrated to the newly established Saskatchewan Party. Although the party has been active again since the 2007 provincial election, no PC candidates have been elected since 1995.

The party was founded in 1905. Saskatchewan joined Confederation on September 1, 1905, and its first election was slated for December of that year. Former Northwest Territories Premier Frederick Haultain had been instrumental in the granting of provincehood. However, while he had advocated for the creation of one large western province—for which he favoured the name Buffalo—Wilfrid Laurier's federal government opted to create two new provinces instead, with Alberta joining Confederation alongside Saskatchewan. Moreover, like Manitoba a generation earlier, the two new provinces were denied rights over their natural resources. In response, Haultain re-branded his Territorial Conservative Association as the Provincial Rights Party in a bid to become premier of Saskatchewan.

Haultain's party was defeated by the Liberal Party in the 1905 election, becoming the Official Opposition with 47.5% of the vote. The 1908 election brought a similar result, with the PR party remaining in Opposition. In 1912, Haultain left politics when he was appointed the Chief Justice of Saskatchewan. When he left, the party opted to re-adopt the Conservative name under the leadership of Wellington Willoughby. The change did not improve the party's fortunes; it lost a third straight election in 1912 to the Liberals and Premier Walter Scott, with its share of the vote falling to 42%. In fact, the Liberals built an impressive political dynasty, securing further majority governments in 1917, 1921, and 1925. In 1921, the Tories were reduced to third-party status as the agrarian Progressive Party gained Opposition status. However, party fortunes began to improve when James T. M. Anderson became leader in 1924.

Anderson had moved to Saskatchewan in 1908 to be a teacher, and in 1918 the Liberal government appointed him as provincial director of education among new Canadians, a role in which he advocated for more assimilationist policies towards the rapidly growing immigrant population. The following decade, Anderson capitalized on the racial and religious animosity created by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan—the organization boasted 25,000 members in the province by 1929—to gain support for Conservative policies on immigration and education; in 1928, Liberal Premier Jimmy Gardiner claimed that the Klan was a tool of the Conservative Party. There certainly was crossover between the organizations, and the Conservatives aided Klan organization by providing it with party membership lists.

In the 1929 election, Anderson led the party to its best performance in the first half of the twentieth century, securing 36% of the popular vote and 24 of 63 seats. Despite having fewer seats than the Liberals' 28, the Conservatives were able to form a coalition government with the support of Progressive and Independents Legislative members (MLAs), and Anderson became Premier. What was known as the "Co-operative government" would introduce amendments to the Schools Act, banning French as a language of instruction and the display of religious symbols in Catholic schools, amendments applauded at the 1930 Klan convention. The government was also successful in curbing patronage through its Public Service Act.

The Anderson-led coalition took office immediately before the onset of the Great Depression, which proved particularly severe on the Prairies. The government's retrenchment in response—similar to R. B. Bennett's federal Conservative government—opened it to attacks from the Liberals as well as a new socialist political movement going by the name of Farmer–Labour, which would in 1935 become the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The government did establish the Saskatchewan Relief Commission to provide some aid to residents, but this did not address the systemic issues creating depression conditions. In 1932, Anderson asked Liberal leader Gardiner to join the coalition, but the Opposition refused. In the 1934 election, the Liberals returned to power and Anderson's Conservatives were wiped out, failing to win a single seat as the Farmer–Labour Group took over Official Opposition status.

After the 1934 defeat, Anderson stayed on as party leader until 1936, when the party chose a young lawyer, John Diefenbaker, as his successor. Although Diefenbaker would go on to revive the fortunes of the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1950s, he was not able to gain ground as the provincial party leader. However, it was not just Diefenbaker. Between 1934 and 1975, only two PC members—the party adopted the Progressive Conservative name in 1942, in line with the federal party—would be elected to the Saskatchewan Legislature: one in a 1953 by-election, and party leader Martin Pederson in the 1964 election; neither was re-elected. Those years were marked by an effective return to a two-party system consisting of the Liberals and the CCF, the latter of which formed five successive majority governments from 1944 to 1964, after which it became the New Democratic Party (NDP). The PCs spent long periods without a leader, and in the early 1970s nearly merged with the provincial Social Credit party; PC members in fact approved the merger in November 1970, but it was ultimately rejected by Social Credit members in February 1971.