The Social Credit Party of Canada (French: Parti Crédit social du Canada) colloquially known as the Socreds, was a conservative-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: 1935–1963

The Canadian social credit movement was largely an out-growth of the Alberta Social Credit Party, and the Social Credit Party of Canada was originally strongest in Alberta. In 1932 an evangelist named William Aberhart used his radio program to preach the values of social credit throughout the province.

The party was formed in 1935 as the Western Social Credit League. It attracted 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 which hit the party's western Canadian birthplace especially hard. It can be credited both for the creation of this party and the rise of a social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.

In the party's first election in 1935, it only ran candidates in Western Canada. It won 17 seats, of which 15 were in Alberta and where it won over 46% of that province's popular vote. John Horne Blackmore was chosen as the party's parliamentary leader.

In 1939, Social Credit merged with the New Democracy movement led by former Conservative William Duncan Herridge. However, Herridge failed to win a seat in the 1940 election, and Blackmore continued as parliamentary leader. At the party's first national convention in 1944, delegates decided to abandon the name New Democracy and founded the Social Credit Association of Canada as a national party. They chose Alberta Treasurer Solon Earl Low as the party's first national leader.

In its first years, the Socreds gained a reputation for anti-Semitism. It was said that Blackmore and Low "frequently gave public aid and comfort to anti-Semitism" In 1945, Solon Low alleged there was a conspiracy of Jewish bankers behind the world's problems, and in 1947, Norman Jaques, the Socred Member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, read excerpts of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the parliamentary Hansard. Low repudiated anti-Semitism in 1957 following a trip to Israel after which he made speeches supporting the Jewish state. After World War II made anti-Semitism less fashionable, the party began purging itself of anti-Semitic influences, leading Quebec social crediter Louis Even and his followers to leave the party in 1947.

In 1957, for instance, Low led the party to its best performance to date, with 19 seats. However, in 1958, the Socreds were swept out of the legislature altogether as part of that year's massive Progressive Conservative landslide. Although it was not apparent at the time, this began a long-term decline for the party. For most of its existence prior to 1958, Social Credit had been either the first or second party in much of rural western Canada, particularly in its birthplace of rural Alberta. In 1957, for instance, it took 13 of Alberta's 17 seats. However, the 1958 defeat firmly established the Tories as the main right-wing party west of Ontario, and Social Credit would never seriously challenge the Tories there again.

Provincial social credit movements

Alberta

Aberhart received a positive response from Albertans to his social credit philosophies. In 1935 he was leader of the Alberta Social Credit Party when it won the 1935 provincial election, forming the first Social Credit government in the world. It subsequently won nine 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 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. 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 electeurs, 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 1946 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.[8] In the 1952 provincial election the Social Credit party under W. A. C. Bennett won the majority of seats and the election. He governed the province for 20 years 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 there were serious tensions between the party's English and French wings. In 1961, Robert Thompson of Alberta defeated Caouette at the party's leadership convention. The vote totals were never announced. Years later, Caouette claimed that he would have won, but Manning advised him to tell the Quebec delegates to vote for Thompson because the West would never accept a Francophone Catholic as party leader.

The party returned to Parliament in the 1962 election, electing 30 members, its highest-ever seat total. Caouette and 25 other créditistes were elected from Quebec. However, it only elected four MPs from the rest of Canada, including Thompson in Red Deer, Alberta. This began a gradual shift in the federal party's strength from Western Canada to Quebec.

Under the circumstances, Thompson had no choice but to name Caouette the party's deputy leader. The linguistic imbalance caused tension 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 it. Thompson refused to resign as party leader and the party voted in 1963 for a motion of non-confidence against the government of John Diefenbaker, forcing an election. The Socreds won 24 seats, all but four coming from Quebec.

On September 9, 1963, the party split into an English Canadian wing and a separate French Canadian party led by Caouette called the Ralliement des créditistes. Of the 20 Social Credit MPs from Quebec in 1963, 13 joined Caouette's Ralliement. Of the remaining seven, two ran in the next election as independents, and two joined the Progressive Conservatives.

Decline of the party in English Canada

The English Canadian party, concentrated in Alberta and British Columbia, won only five seats in the 1965 federal election. Thompson was frustrated by the lack of support given to the federal wing, while the provincial parties in Alberta and British Columbia won provincial elections with large majorities. British Columbia's Socred Premier, W.A.C. Bennett cut off his party's organizational and financial support after the 1965 election in hopes of pressuring the federal party to reconcile with Caouette's Créditistes.

Alberta Premier Manning was becoming concerned with the perceived leftward trajectory of the federal Liberals and Progressive Conservatives (PCs). He encouraged Thompson to begin talks with the PCs about a merger. Negotiations failed and in March 1967, citing lack of support for the party from its provincial wings in Alberta and British Columbia, Thompson resigned as leader. In the fall Bud Olson left to join the Liberals. With the support of both Manning and PC leader Robert Stanfield, Thompson crossed the floor to the PCs. He sought and won the PC nomination in Red Deer when the June 1968 federal election was called. Alexander Bell Patterson was named acting leader of the remains.

In the 1968 election, Social Credit lost its remaining three seats. This was due to its internal turmoil, Manning’s call to merge with the PCs, the defections of Thompson and Olson, and the wave of Trudeaumania across Canada. National party president Herb Bruch said Patterson’s refusal to take a clear stand on whether the Socreds would support Stanfield’s PCs in Parliament was a contributing factor in the party’s defeat. Patterson expressed confidence that the party could return as it had after the Diefenbaker sweep in the 1958 election, noting the strength of the Créditistes in Quebec, and expressed hope that the two parties would be reunited. However, the party would never win another seat in English Canada.

Reunification

In 1971, the Ralliement des créditistes and the English Canadian Social Credit Party held a joint leadership convention at the Hull Arena. The two parties merged into a single national party under the Social Credit name, and Caouette won the leadership on the first ballot.

In the 1972 election, the Social Credit Party won 15 seats — all in Quebec — and 7.6% of the popular vote. Manning was appointed to the Canadian Senate in 1970--the first and (as it turned out) only Socred ever to serve in that body. Patterson returned to Parliament as a Progressive Conservative in the 1972 election.