The Social Credit Party of Canada (), colloquially known as the Socreds, was a populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform. It was the federal wing of the Canadian social credit movement.
Origins and founding: 1932–1963 The Canadian social credit movement emerged during the Great Depression from the monetary reform theories of British engineer C. H. Douglas, whose ideas argued that economic hardship was caused in part by a shortage of consumer purchasing power. In Canada, the movement first became a major political force in Alberta, where Baptist evangelist William Aberhart promoted social credit ideas through radio broadcasts, study groups, and public meetings. Aberhart's religious background gave the Alberta movement a pronounced evangelical and socially conservative character, which distinguished it from Douglas's original economic theory.
Aberhart's Alberta Social Credit Party won the 1935 Alberta general election, taking 56 of 63 seats and forming what has often been described as the first Social Credit government in the world. The provincial victory encouraged social credit supporters to enter federal politics later the same year. In the 1935 Canadian federal election, Social Credit candidates ran mainly in Western Canada and won 17 seats, including 15 in Alberta. John Horne Blackmore, elected in Lethbridge, was chosen as parliamentary leader, while Aberhart, who remained premier of Alberta and did not run federally, was widely regarded as the movement's dominant figure.
The new federal movement drew support from western protest politics, including former supporters of the Progressive Party of Canada and the United Farmers movement. Like the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which also first contested a federal election in 1935, Social Credit benefited from Depression-era dissatisfaction with the old-line parties. Its base, however, was more strongly rural, western, and monetary-reform oriented than that of the CCF.
In 1939, Social Credit supporters joined the New Democracy movement led by William Duncan Herridge, a former Conservative adviser and Canadian envoy to the United States. Herridge advocated monetary reform and state intervention as responses to the Depression, ideas that overlapped with the social credit movement. In the 1940 Canadian federal election, Social Credit and New Democracy candidates ran under a loose common banner. Herridge failed to win a seat, and Blackmore continued as parliamentary leader of the Social Credit group.
At the movement's first national convention in 1944, delegates abandoned the New Democracy name and founded the Social Credit Association of Canada as a national party. The convention chose Alberta treasurer Solon Earl Low as the party's first official national leader. Low led the party through the postwar period and was elected to the House of Commons for Peace River in the 1945 Canadian federal election.
In its early years, Social Credit was also associated with antisemitism within parts of the movement. Historians have noted that several prominent social crediters promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish financiers or used antisemitic material in political argument. Low publicly repudiated antisemitism in the late 1950s, and the party gradually distanced itself from its earlier antisemitic associations.
Under Low, the party remained strongest in Alberta and British Columbia. In the 1957 Canadian federal election, Social Credit won 19 seats, its best result to that point, but it was eliminated from the House of Commons in the 1958 Canadian federal election during the Progressive Conservative landslide under John Diefenbaker. Although the party later returned to Parliament, the 1958 defeat weakened Social Credit's position in English Canada and helped establish the Progressive Conservatives as the dominant right-of-centre federal party in the West.
Provincial social credit movements
Alberta Aberhart's version of social credit received a positive response from Albertans. In 1935, much to its own surprise, the Alberta Social Credit Party won the 1935 provincial election, forming the first Social Credit government in the world. It went on to win nine subsequent elections, and governed until 1971.
Quebec In the 1940s, Social Credit supporters in Quebec often ran under the name Union des électeurs. This was a social credit organization that was formed in 1939 by Louis Even and Gilberte Côté-Mercier as the political arm of their religious organization, the Pilgrims of Saint Michael. They shared some ideologies, but did not merge or collaborate with the western-based national party and had an inconsistent attitude towards electoral politics. The Union des électeurs' electoral philosophy was that it was not a partisan political party but an organization to marshal voters to enforce their wishes on their elected representatives."Shades of Mr. Aberhart", Toronto Daily Star, July 8, 1948 Even believed party politics was corrupt and that the party system should be abolished and replaced by a "union of electors" who would compel elected officials to follow the popular will. The Union also favoured a more orthodox application of social credit economic theory, something that the western based Social Credit movement had begun to move away from under the influence of Alberta premier Ernest Manning. This led to tensions with the national party and Even initially opposed the creation of a national Social Credit Party.
Réal Caouette, a member of the Union des électeurs, won a 1946 by-election as a Social Credit MP and ran, unsuccessfully, for re-election as a Union des électeurs candidate in the 1949 federal election. In 1958, Caouette disagreed with Even, Côté-Mercier and the increasingly hostile attitude of the Union des électeurs towards elections and party politics. He founded the Ralliement des créditistes which won recognition as the Quebec wing of the national Social Credit party.
Ontario The Union des électeurs philosophy inspired an Ontario group, the Union of Electors led by Ron Gostick, to form in 1950 as a rival to the Ontario Social Credit League. It first ran candidates in the 1948 provincial election under the "Union of Electors" label. Even's views also led to a debate within the national Social Credit Party about whether to continue to run on a Social Credit basis or under the "non-partisan" Union of Electors banner.
British Columbia In British Columbia, the movement split: both the British Columbia Social Credit League and the Union of Electors ran candidates in the 1949 provincial election."100,000 Newcomers May Decide Election in B.C.", Toronto Daily Star, June 14, 1949 In the 1952 provincial election, the Social Credit party under W. A. C. Bennett won a plurality of seats (defeating the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation by one seat) in the election. The Socreds won a majority government in 1953, and Bennett governed the province until his loss in the 1972 provincial election. The party won the subsequent 1975 provincial election and governed until 1991.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba The provincial social credit parties of Saskatchewan and Manitoba won some ridings in the 1950s and 1960s; however, they were unable to form a government.
Split between Quebec and English Canadian factions: 1963–1973
In the early 1960s, the party became divided between its English Canadian wing, based mainly in Alberta and British Columbia, and its rapidly growing Quebec wing, led by Réal Caouette. In 1961, Robert Thompson of Alberta defeated Caouette at the party's national leadership convention. The vote totals were not announced. Caouette later claimed that he would have won, but that Alberta premier Ernest Manning advised him to ask Quebec delegates to support Thompson because the party's western wing would not accept a francophone Catholic leader.
The party returned to Parliament in the 1962 Canadian federal election, electing 30 MPs, its highest seat total. Caouette and 25 other Social Credit MPs were elected from Quebec, while only four were elected from the rest of Canada, including Thompson in Red Deer, Alberta. Under these circumstances, Thompson appointed Caouette deputy leader.
The imbalance in the caucus sharpened tensions. Quebec MPs generally regarded Caouette as their effective leader, while Thompson remained the official national leader. Caouette and many Quebec créditistes also continued to emphasize social credit monetary theory, whereas the party's western leadership had increasingly moved toward a broader right-wing populist and conservative orientation. Thompson refused to resign as party leader, and relations between the two wings deteriorated after the 1963 Canadian federal election, in which Social Credit won 24 seats, 20 of them in Quebec.
On September 1, 1963, Quebec Social Credit delegates voted to reject Thompson's leadership. Caouette then led most of the party's Quebec wing into a separate party, the Ralliement des créditistes. Library and Archives Canada describes the split as the result of internal dissension and states that Caouette and 12 Quebec MPs left the national party in September 1963 to sit as the Ralliement des créditistes. The Canadian Elections Database similarly records that the Quebec wing split from the federal party later in 1963 and that 13 Quebec MPs stayed with the new party, while others later ran as independents or joined the Progressive Conservatives.
Decline of the party in English Canada After the split, the English Canadian Social Credit Party was concentrated mainly in Alberta and British Columbia. It won five seats in the 1965 Canadian federal election, while Caouette's Ralliement des créditistes won nine seats in Quebec.
The party's difficulties deepened after the 1965 election. British Columbia premier W. A. C. Bennett, whose provincial Social Credit organization was one of the movement's strongest branches, withdrew organizational and financial support from the federal party in an effort to encourage reconciliation with Caouette's créditistes. In March 1967, Thompson resigned as national leader, citing lack of support from the provincial Social Credit organizations.
Later in 1967, Bud Olson, one of the remaining western Social Credit MPs, joined the Liberal Party. Thompson subsequently crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives. Alexander Bell Patterson became acting leader of the remaining English Canadian party.
In the 1968 Canadian federal election, the Social Credit Party lost its remaining seats in English Canada, while the Ralliement créditiste won 14 seats in Quebec. The result effectively ended the federal Social Credit Party's parliamentary presence outside Quebec.
Reunification
In 1971, the English Canadian Social Credit Party and the Quebec-based Ralliement créditiste reunited under the Social Credit name. At a joint leadership convention in Hull, Quebec, Caouette was elected leader of the reunited party on the first ballot. The reunification effectively shifted the party's federal base to Quebec.
In the 1972 Canadian federal election, the reunited Social Credit Party won 15 seats, all of them in Quebec, and received 7.6 percent of the national popular vote. Ernest Manning had been appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1970, becoming the only Social Credit figure to serve in that chamber. Patterson returned to Parliament as a Progressive Conservative in the 1972 election.
Decline: 1973–1980