Reform Party of Canada

The Reform Party of Canada (French: Parti réformiste du 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.

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 a backlash over the party's failure to take a stance on supporting a motion of non-confidence in Joe Clark's government in 1979 resulted in 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.

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 MP; and Robert Muir, former president of the Canadian Petroleum Law Foundation. 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. 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."