Conservative Party of Quebec

The Parti conservateur du Québec (in English: Conservative Party of Quebec) was a political party in Quebec, Canada.

Origins

The party originated as the Parti bleu which was formed around 1850 by the followers of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine. The parti bleu opposed the anti-clericalism and radicalism of its rival, the parti rouge of Louis-Joseph Papineau.

The parti bleu supported the role of the clergy in Quebec society. Members of the parti bleu, led by George-Étienne Cartier from Canada East, joined with the followers of Sir John A. Macdonald in Canada West to form a coalition government with Cartier as co-premier from 1857 to 1862. It was out of this coalition that the Conservative Party was formed (then known as Liberal-Conservative), laying the basis for Confederation in 1867.

Post-Confederation

With Confederation and Quebec's entry as a province, what had been the parti bleu became the Quebec wing of Macdonald's Conservative Party. It formed the government in the province, with Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau as Quebec's first premier. Cartier acted as Macdonald's Quebec lieutenant in the federal House of Commons. The Conservatives dominated Quebec politics at both the federal and provincial level for the next 30 years. The Conservatives held power in Quebec City for 25 out of 30 years, providing eight of the province's ten premiers in that period.

However, the party became increasingly divided between a moderate wing and an Ultramontane wing of Catholic fundamentalists. As well, the party's links with the federal Conservatives harmed the party as the Tories in English Canada became increasingly identified as hostile to French Canadians and Quebec. The execution of Louis Riel in 1885 outraged French Canadians and hurt the Macdonald Conservatives at the polls.

After Macdonald's death in 1891, the coalition that formed the national Conservatives unravelled, particularly around the Manitoba Schools Question that pitted English-Canadian Protestants against French-Canadian Catholics. This issue essentially ended the possibility of a significant French-Canadian presence in western Canada.

The federal Conservatives lost the 1896 federal election, largely due to the collapse of their support in Quebec. The provincial Conservative government of Edmund James Flynn lost the 1897 Quebec election.

With the defeats of 1896 and 1897, the Conservatives became a minority party in Quebec at both levels of government. The Conservative Party of Quebec never formed another provincial government. The Quebec Liberal Party held power without interruption for the next 38 years.

Decline and re-emergence as Union Nationale

Conservative fortunes were further hurt by the Conscription Crisis of 1917 when the federal Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden invoked conscription against the opposition of Quebec. This led to riots in the province.

In 1933, Maurice Duplessis became leader of the Quebec Conservatives. The next year, the ruling Liberal party split when a group of nationalist Liberals dissatisfied with the government of Louis-Alexandre Taschereau bolted from the party to form the Action libérale nationale or ALN. Duplessis wooed the dissident party and, two weeks before the 1935 election, the Conservatives and ALN formed a "Union Nationale" alliance to contest the election. The alliance was later formalized as a merger into a single political party, the Union Nationale.

The UN took power in the 1936 election, were unexpectedly defeated in 1939, but went on to dominate Quebec politics from 1944 until Duplessis died in 1959. In the 1958 federal election, Duplessis lent the UN's electoral machine to John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives, helping them to win the majority of ridings there.

The Union Nationale formed the government again from 1966-1970 and afterwards went into rapid decline, being supplanted by the Parti Québécois as the main opposition to the Liberals.

Supporters endorse Quebec Liberals

Since the late 1960s, separatism/federalism became the main divide for the next few decades where national unity was a major issue, rather than the traditional conservatism/liberalism. Federalists, whether conservative or liberal, generally supported the Liberals led by Robert Bourassa. In the 1970s, Bourassa had a strained relationship with the federal Liberals of Pierre Trudeau, who were staunch federalists.

Claude Wagner, a judge and a prominent Quebec Liberal cabinet minister who departed provincial politics in 1970, ran successfully as a Progressive Conservative in the 1972 federal election, and was the front-runner in the party leadership convention in 1976 before losing on the final ballot to Joe Clark. When Bourassa returned to politics in the 1980s, he worked closely with the federal Progressive Conservatives led by Brian Mulroney. During that decade, the Liberals won the majority of Quebec's seats in 1985 and 1989, while the PCs did so at the federal level in 1984 and 1988.

In 1998, federal PC leader Jean Charest moved to provincial politics as the leader of the Quebec Liberals.

Revival in the 1980s

A new Parti conservateur du Québec (sometimes referred to as the Parti progressiste conservateur du Québec) was formed in 1982 with Denis Carignan as leader but was rebuffed by federal Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark who told them to keep their distance.

The party was dormant until January 1985 when he stepped aside to allow André Asselin, a lawyer, mayor of the small town of Ste-Émilie-de-l'Énergie, and president of the Quebec Union of Regional Municipal Councils, to become party leader. However, Brian Mulroney told the press following a meeting with Liberal leader Robert Bourassa that he did not support the creation of a provincial Conservative Party at the time. By the 1980s, the Union Nationale was no longer a contender for office and in terminal decline - though it rebuffed an offer by Asselin for a merger with his Conservative Party. After making an impression in a June 1985 by-election in which Asselin placed second with 30% of the vote in L'Assomption, the party nominated 48 candidates for the December 1985 provincial election but failed to make a major impact, receiving 1.03% popular vote. Asselin blamed the party's poor showing on what he called deliberate sabotage by federal Tory officials who discouraged Conservatives from giving money or otherwise becoming identified with the provincial group.

Asselin resigned as party leader in 1989 leaving Robert Coppenrath to lead the party into the 1989 election where it ran 12 candidates and received 0.14% of the vote. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the party disbanded shortly afterward.

2009 revival

In 2009, former Union Nationale MNAs Serge Fontaine and Bertrand Goulet announced the formation of a new Conservative Party of Quebec.^[1] Fontaine had offered Éric Caire of the ADQ to join the party and become its leader, with a view to attract disaffected ADQ supporters, but this did not materialise and Caire now sits as an independent.^[2]

Leaders of the Parti conservateur du Québec

• Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau 1867-1873 (Premier 1867-1873)
• Gédéon Ouimet 1873-1874 (Premier 1873-1874)
• Charles-Eugène Boucher de Boucherville 1874-1878 (Premier 1874-1878, 1891-1892)
• Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau 1878-1882 (Premier 1879-1882)
• Joseph-Alfred Mousseau 1882-1884 (Premier 1882-1884)
• John Jones Ross 1884-1887 (Premier 1884-1887)
• Louis-Olivier Taillon 1887-1896 (Premier 1887, 1892-1896)
• Edmund James Flynn 1896-1904 (Premier 1896-1897)
• Pierre-Évariste Leblanc 1905-1908
• Joseph-Mathias Tellier 1909-1915
• Philémon Cousineau 1915-1916
• Arthur Sauvé 1916-1929
• Camillien Houde 1929-1932
• Maurice Duplessis 1933-1936 (later, Premier as leader of Union Nationale)

Leaders of the revived Parti conservateur du Québec

• Denis Carignan 1982-1985
• André Asselin 1985-1989
• Robert Coppenrath 1989

Election results

General election	# of candidates	# of seats won	% of popular vote
1867	69	51	59.90%
1871	67	46	56.81%
1875	68	44	56.53%
1878	66	32	51.50%
1881	62	48	54.12%
1886	63	26	48.09%
1890	62	24	46.47%
1892	71	51	53.39%
1897	67	23	43.82%
1900	34	7	42.08%
1904	24	6	31.27%
1908	62	14	39.92%
1912	75	16	42.68%
1916	55	6	35.09%
1919	22	5	19.50%
1923	71	20	40.47%
1927	69	9	35.45%
1931	89	11	43.06%
1935	34	16	18.84%
1985	48	0	1.03%
1989	12	0	0.14%

See also

• Union Nationale
• Politics of Quebec
• List of Quebec premiers
• List of Quebec leaders of the Opposition
• List of Quebec general elections
• National Assembly of Quebec
• Timeline of Quebec history
• Political parties in Quebec
• List of elections in the Province of Canada
• Conservative Party of Quebec leadership elections

References

1. ^ "Politique : Le Parti conservateur du Québec renaît | Mauricie". Radio-Canada.ca. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/mauricie/2009/04/08/002-parti-conservateur-quebec_n.shtml. Retrieved 2011-10-06. 
2. ^ "Tensions à l'ADQ : Le Parti conservateur du Québec tisse des liens | Mauricie". Radio-Canada.ca. 2009-10-19. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/mauricie/2009/11/13/001-parti-conservateur-quebec-adq.shtml. Retrieved 2011-10-06. 

External links

• National Assembly historical information
• La Politique québécoise sur le Web