In the 1974 federal vote, only nine women were elected to the House of Commons out of 264 MPs. But just two years later, Flora MacDonald mounted a strong effort to win the leadership of the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party of Canada, at the time the main alternative to the governing Liberals of Pierre Trudeau. Robert Stanfield, a former Nova Scotia premier, had led the PC Party since 1967. After losing the 1974 election, he announced his decision to step down. 

Flora MacDonald was born in Cape Breton in 1926. From 1956, she held a variety of roles in the PC Party. She worked in Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s office. She worked on Stanfield’s PC leadership campaign in 1967. She was elected MP for Kingston and the Islands in 1972. She was viewed as a moderate who opposed capital punishment and supported equal rights for women. MacDonald also believed that the government has a role to play in the economy. She died in 2015 at the age of 89.

The 1976 PC leadership convention was held in Ottawa from February 20 to 22. There were 2,581 delegates. They would choose the new leader from 11 candidates. Claude Wagner, Brian Mulroney, and MacDonald were seen by many in the media as front-runners. Wagner was an MP and former Quebec justice minister. His law-and-order stance appealed to the party’s right wing. Mulroney was not an MP. However, he had broad experience as a leading PC activist in Quebec. MacDonald got a lot of her support from the party’s left wing and Red Tories. She was endorsed by David Crombie, mayor of Toronto. Richard Hatfield, premier of New Brunswick, also supported her.

The results were a disappointment for MacDonald. Her team hoped she would get the first-round votes of at least 300 delegates, but she only got 214. MacDonald placed sixth in the first round. Joe Clark won the contest after four rounds of voting.

MacDonald went on to serve as Canada’s first female minister of external affairs from 1979 to 1980 in Clark’s government. In this role, she helped rescue American diplomats from Tehran. She served in cabinet again from 1984 to 1988. She lost her seat in the 1988 election.

While the PC Party’s record on women’s rights was mixed, it did make contributions to the cause of gender equality. Diefenbaker appointed the first female federal cabinet minister, Ellen Fairclough. Kim Campbell became the first woman to serve as minister of justice and minister of defence. Campbell won the 1993 PC leadership race to become prime minister. These milestones showed that party leaders and members were sometimes willing to challenge stereotypes about women. 

During the patriation of the Constitution, Clark supported the inclusion of section 28, guaranteeing gender equality in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government led by Mulroney played a large role in implementing the Charter clauses related to equal rights. On the other hand, the PC government in office from 1984 to 1993 was criticized for its handling of issues such as reproductive rights and childcare funding. Within the PC caucus there was tension between moderates and traditionalists over such topics. 

Nevertheless, while it existed between 1942 and 2003, the PC Party was a big-tent party that made space for centrist voices and leaders. This helped the PCs keep in step with changes in Canadian society in key areas such as women’s rights. 

The PC Party’s record on women’s rights carries lessons for all right-of-centre parties in any democracy today. If a right-of-centre party shuts out centrist voices and leaders, it ceases to be a genuinely conservative party and becomes instead a reactionary party that is cut off from society as a whole. 

A party that is detached from broad social trends ceases to perform a truly conservative role and becomes instead just a vehicle for right-wing interest groups. Genuine conservatism is not about rejecting change, but about managing it prudently. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke wrote, "A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.” 

Michael Huenefeld is a financial policy consultant for a nonprofit in Vancouver. He was an activist in the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1998 to 2003. 

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