The ( -
Populist political party in
Canada that promoted
Social Credit theories of monetary reform. It was the federal wing of the
Canadian Social Credit Movement .
When first formed in 1935, Social Credit took many voters from the
Progressive Party Of Canada and the
United Farmers Movement. The party grew out of disaffection with the status quo during the
Great Depression . The depression hit the party's western Canadian birth-place especially hard, and can be credited both for the creation of this party and the rise of a social democratic party, the
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation .
In 1935, in the party's first
Election , it won seventeen seats, all but two of them in
Alberta , where it won over 46% of that province's
Popular Vote .
In 1939, Social Credit joined with former
Conservative William Duncan Herridge and his supporters in the
New Democracy movement. The Social Credit Party ran in the
1940 Election under the "New Democracy" name, but reverted to "Social Credit" for the
1945 Election .
Beginning in the early 1960s, there were serious tensions between the party's English and French wings. In 1961,
Robert Thompson of Alberta defeated
Real Caouette of
Quebec at the party's leadership convention. The vote totals were never announced; many suspect that Caouette actually won more votes, but was rejected by the party's western leadership for fear that he would be a liability. (
Alberta Premier Ernest Manning had previously told the convention that his province would never accept a francophone Catholic as the party's leader.)
It is not likely that the vote was fixed in Thompson's favor, as Caouette became the party's deputy leader after leading its Quebec wing to a major breakthrough in the
1962 Election . 26 créditistes were elected from Quebec. However, only four Socreds, including Thompson, were elected in the rest of Canada. The linguistic imbalance caused severe tensions in the Social Credit
Caucus , as the Quebec MPs regarded Caouette as their leader. Also, Caouette and the other Quebec MPs remained true believers in social credit theory, while the English branch had largely abandoned the theory. Thompson refused to stand down, and on September 9, 1963, the party split into an English Canadian wing and a separate French Canadian party led by Caouette - the
Ralliement Des Créditistes .
Of the 20 Social Credit MPs from Quebec in 1963, 13 joined Caouette's Ralliement, five of the remaining seven ran in the next election as independents, and two joined the
Progressive Conservative Party Of Canada .
The English Canadian party, concentrated in Alberta and British Columbia, won only five seats in 1965. In 1967, two of its MPs left the party: party leader Robert Thompson defected to the Progressive Conservatives, while
Bud Olson , joined the
Liberal Party .
In the
1968 Election , Social Credit lost its last two seats in English Canada. The party would never elect another MP from English Canada, although Manning was appointed to the
Canadian Senate in 1970.
In 1971, the ''Ralliement'' and the English-Canadian ''Social Credit'' reunited into a single national party, with Caouette as leader.
In the
1972 Election , the Social Credit Party won 15 seats - all in Quebec - and 7.6% of the popular vote.
In the . Many Social Credit MPs ran for re-election on their own strengths, making little mention of the party or its leader in their campaign materials. The party's support in Quebec was undermined by rumours that its MPs had made deals with the Progressive Conservatives during Caouette's illness. The Social Credit Party won eleven seats, but nevertheless retained
Official Party Status in the
House Of Commons ; rules provide for automatic recognition of parties that hold at least twelve seats, but they do not state specifically that a party with less seats is not to be recognized. After Socreds failed in their attempts to convince Independent MP
Leonard Jones to join their party, this solely for the sake of getting official recognition and despite their almost complete absence of political compatibility, the
Speaker Of The House Of Commons , with approval from the Liberal government, decided to recognize the party anyway.
The decline of the party accelerated after Caouette's death in 1976. A 32-year-old Quebec MP,
André-Gilles Fortin , was elected to replace Caouette on November 7, 1976. Social Credit was dealt a further blow when Fortin died on June 24, 1977. Réal's son,
Gilles Caouette , was named acting leader five days after Fortin's death.
In 1978, Socreds elected
Lorne Reznowski as their leader, in an attempt to revive the party outside of Quebec. Reznowski, an anglophone
Manitoban , presented himself as a candidate in the October 16, 1978 by-elections and fared extremely poorly (1,204 votes, only 2.76% of the 43,572 valid votes in the riding of
Saint Boniface ), which prompted him to resign quickly thereafter. He was replaced as acting leader by
Charles-Arthur Gauthier .
Popular provincial créditiste .)''
Joe Clark 's Progressive Conservatives formed a
Minority Government after the election. The Socreds had just enough seats to give the Tories a majority in the House had the two parties formed a
Coalition Government or otherwise agreed to work together. Prime Minister Clark, who declared that he would govern as if he had a majority, refused to grant the small Social Credit caucus the official party status it wanted, let alone form a coalition or make concessions to the party in order to gain its votes. Clark convinced one Socred MP, Richerd Janelle from Lotbinière, to leave the party and join the government caucus. In December 1979, the remaining five members of the Social Credit caucus demanded that the Conservatives amend their budget to allocate the controversial gas tax revenues to Quebec. Clark refused and the Social Credit caucus abstained in a vote on a
Motion Of No Confidence , causing the Conservative government to fall.
The abstention by Social Credit on the important budget vote (while the Liberals and NDP voted to bring down the government) contributed to the growing perception that the party had become irrelevant following the death of iconic leader
Réal Caouette . The resulting February 18,
1980 Election not only defeated the Clark government but wiped out Social Credit, leaving it without any MPs in Parliament.
The death of the Social Credit candidate in the riding of Frontenac, Quebec, resulted in the postponement of the election in that riding to March 24, 1980. Fabien Roy sought to return to the House of Commons in that
By-election , but lost to the Liberal candidate. Roy resigned as leader on November 1, 1980. The party would never another seat in the House of Commons.
After
Fabien Roy 's resignation, the party chose
Martin Hattersley in 1981 as interim leader over Alberta evangelist
Ken Sweigard . Hattersley was an Edmonton lawyer and former British army officer.
In the May 4, 1981 by-election in Levis, Quebec, the party nominated Martin Caya. Caya placed 6th in a field of 7, winning 367 votes (1.1% of the total), ahead of renegade Socred
John C. Turmel . Turmel, running as an independent, won 172 votes.
In the August 17, 1981 by-election in Quebec, party president Carl O’Malley placed 5th in a field of 8 candidates, with 92 votes (0.2% of the total). Turmel won 42 votes, placing last.
Hattersley resigned in 1983 when the party would not drop from its membership three outspoken Albertans accused of
Anti-Semitism .
In June 1983, Sweigard was elected interim leader by means of a telephone conference call of 19 party executive members, with 9 votes to 5 votes for party vice-president Richard Lawrence. Quebec party member Adrien Lambert was nominated, but could not be reached by telephone. He nonetheless won two votes.
When the call began, two candidates were in the race -- professional gambler John Turmel of
Ottawa , and tractor dealer
Elmer Knutson of
Edmonton , the founder of West-Fed, a western Canada separatist movement.
Turmel's candidacy was rejected on the basis that his membership had been suspended. Turmel subsequently formed the
Christian Credit Party , and later, the
Abolitionist Party Of Canada , both based on social credit principles. Knutson failed to win endorsement because he was not well known by the members of the executive. Knutson subsequently quit the party to form the
Confederation Of Regions Party .
The meeting decided to appoint an interim leader until a leadership convention could be held in September 1983. This convention was deferred until June 1986, and Sweigard remained as interim leader until that time. Also in 1983, Manning retired from the Senate after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75, ending the Social Credit's representation on
Parliament Hill .
In the ''.
Sweigard resigned as leader in 1986. The party's leadership was subsequently won by the
Socially Conservative Ontario evangelical minister
Harvey Lainson , who defeated
Holocaust Denier James Keegstra by 67 votes to 38 at a delegated convention in
Toronto . Lainson's campaign focused on gun rights and an opposition to abortion and the
Metric System . (He was not affiliated with the anti-Semitic groups that endorsed Keegstra.)
The party nominated
Andrew Varaday as its candidate in the 1987 Hamilton Mountain by-election. He won 149 votes (0.4% of the total), placing last in a field of six candidates, which included John Turmel (166 votes).
In the
1988 Election , the party nominated nine candidates: six in Quebec, two in Ontario, and one in BC. These candidates collected a total of 3,408 votes (0.02% of votes cast in all ridings). The BC candidate, running in New Westminster-Burnaby, won 718 votes (1.3% of the total). Although the party did not nominate the 50 candidates required to obtain official party status, the Chief Electoral Officer agreed to put the party's name on the ballots for the nine candidates on the basis of its historical status as an official party.
In 1990, the remnant of the federal Social Credit party was taken over by
Social Conservative evangelist
Ken Campbell , who rechristened it the , and later the '''Christian Freedom Party'''.
In 1990, the party nominated two candidates in by-elections, each of whom won 96 votes. In the February 12 by-election in Chambly, Quebec, Emilian Martel placed last in a field of six, winning 0.2% of the total vote. Party leader Ken Campbell placed 7th out of 10, winning 0.4% of the total vote in the August 13 by-election in Oshawa, Ontario. John Turmel placed last with 50 votes in this race.
The party failed to nominate at least fifty candidates for the
1993 Election , and was deregistered by
Elections Canada on September 27, 1993. Its candidates in that election were reclassified as Independents.
Social Credit has not attempted to run candidates on the national level since then, but still exists as an incorporated entity in the form of the under which Ken Campbell publishes political advocacy material in order to preserve his ministry's status as a religious charity.
(These results do not include those for
Union Des électeurs , Independent Social Credit candidates, or the
Ralliement Des Créditistes .)
- In the 1940 election, W.D. Herridge ran a group of 17 social credit candidates as members of a party called New Democracy . In addition to the official Social Credit party, they won 3 seats and received 73,083 or 1.59% of the national vote.
Quebec Social Credit supporters were mostly
Social Conservatives and
Quebec Nationalists , while western Canadian supporters were mostly socially conservative
Populists .
With the collapse of Social Credit in western Canada in 1968, many former members of Social Credit, including a number of MPs, joined the Progressive Conservatives. After the collapse of the party in Quebec, many of its supporters supported
Brian Mulroney in his "great coalition" of western populists, Quebec nationalists, and Ontario fiscal conservatives.
Mulroney's coalition fell apart in the
1993 Election . Most of the great coalition's western support left the party to form the
Reform Party Of Canada (later the
Canadian Alliance ). The Quebec nationalist wing of the party left to form the
Bloc Québécois .
Western social conservatives would likely have been attracted to the PC and Reform parties or the
Christian Heritage Party . Quebec nationalists probably moved first to the PC Party and then Bloc Québécois. The true believers in social credit monetary theories continued to promote their beliefs through the short-lived
Canada Party in the 1993 election and subsequently in the
Canadian Action Party .
There have been discussions by the
Alberta Social Credit Party to re-start the federal party, but ideological differences between monetary reformers and social conservatives in the party have thus far stalled such efforts.
