Parti rouge

The Parti rouge (French for "Red Party", or Parti démocratique, "Democratic Party") was a political group that contested elections in the Eastern section of the Province of Canada. It was formed around 1847 by radical French-Canadians inspired by the ideas of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the Institut canadien de Montréal, and the reformist movement led by the Parti patriote of the 1830s. The Red Party did not experience electoral success in the same manner as the Blue Party, their electoral rivals in Canada East. Because of their anti-clerical beliefs, the Red Party was condemned by the Catholic Church, contributing to their lack of electoral success. The party did form government as part of a coalition with the Clear Grits and Liberals from Canada West on some occasions before confederation, but never held a majority in their section of the province. After confederation, the party was dissolved, with members forming the Liberal Party of Canada at the federal level, and the Liberal Party of Quebec at the provincial level. The party was a successor to the Parti patriote, a radical political movement in Lower Canada responsible for the rebellions of 1837–1838. The reformist rouges did not believe that the 1840 Act of Union had truly granted a responsible government to former Upper and Lower Canada. They advocated important democratic reforms, republicanism, and secularism (separation of the state and the church). They were perceived as anti-clerical and radical by their political adversaries. Some of its members desired the abolition of the semi-feudal seigneurial system of land ownership, although Papineau was himself a seigneur and a vocal defender of the traditional system, which he wanted reformed, not abolished. The elected rouges typically allied with the Clear Grits in the legislature of the Province of Canada. The party primarily sat in opposition to the Liberal-Conservative-Bleu government that governed the province for most of the period between the fall of the reform movement and confederation.