Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
Summary
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC; Parti progressiste-conservateur du Canada) was a centre to centre-right federal political party in Canada that existed from 1942 to 2003.
From Canadian Confederation in 1867 until 1942, the original Conservative Party of Canada participated in numerous governments and had multiple names. In 1942, its name was changed to the Progressive Conservative Party under the request of Manitoba Progressive Premier John Bracken. In the 1957 federal election, John Diefenbaker carried the Tories to their first victory in 27 years. The year after, he carried the PCs to the largest federal electoral landslide in history (in terms of proportion of seats). During his tenure, human rights initiatives were achieved, most notably the Bill of Rights. In the 1963 federal election, the PCs lost power. The PCs would not gain power again until 1979, when Joe Clark led the party to a minority government victory. However, the party lost power only nine months later. In 1983, Clark lost his leadership role to Brian Mulroney, who helped the PC Party gain popularity in Quebec. Mulroney won back-to-back majority governments in 1984 and 1988, and during his tenure, major economic reforms such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the goods and services tax (GST) were introduced.
The unpopularity of the GST, the government's failed attempts with the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, and the early 1990s recession, caused the party to become heavily unpopular, and thus collapse in the 1993 federal election, winning just two seats. Western Canadian PC support transferred to the more right-wing Reform Party, whereas PC support from Quebec transferred to the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois. Ultimately, the Progressive Conservatives did not recover in the subsequent 1997 and 2000 federal elections. When it became clear that neither the Progressive Conservatives nor the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance (the latter being the successor of the Reform Party) could defeat the incumbent Liberals that governed since the 1993 election, an effort to unite the right-of-centre parties emerged.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.