Progressive Party of Canada
former political party in Canada

The Progressive Party of Canada, formally the National Progressive Party, was a federal-level political party in Canada in the 1920s until 1930. It was linked with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces, and it spawned the Progressive Party of Saskatchewan, and the Progressive Party of Manitoba, which formed the government of that province. The Progressive Party was part of the farmers' political movement that included federal and provincial Progressive and United Farmers' parties.
The United Farmers movement in Canada rose to prominence after World War I. With the failure of the wartime Union government to alter a tariff structure that hurt farmers, various farmers movements across Canada became more radical and entered the political arena. The United Farmers movement was tied to the federal Progressive Party of Canada and formed provincial governments in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba. It rejected the National Policy of the Conservatives, and derided the Liberals for not being strong proponents of free trade and for being too tied to business interests. Generally, farmers groups formed alliances with Labour and socialist groups. However, when in power, they behaved closer to the Liberals; this caused ruptures in several provinces between United Farmer governments and their organizations.
Origins
The origins of the Progressive Party can be traced to the politics of compromise under Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The most important issue to farmers in western Canada at the time was free trade with the United States.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Progressive Party of Canada” is former political party in Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Progressive, Party and Canada, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Progressive Party of Canada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.