The Conservative Party of Canada has, as one of it's favorite slogans, the fact that it is 'the founding party of Canada.'. 

   

   Today is July 1st, Canada Day, and a good day to reflect on what kind of party it was that led the founding government of this country. 

  

   When did Canada's founding party become the force for wealthy foreign elites against democratic rights, the party of rigged contracts for infrustructure mega-projects, of militarized police enforcing laws with no public support and resource exploitation contracts with no regards for the rights of First Nations?

 

Right from the start. 

 

 

John A. Macdonald was funnelling money from the British crown, for the cost of Canada's founding mega-project, the railway that would tie this country together form ocean to ocean. 

 

The railway was going to be built, regardless of which party was in power, that much was clear.

 

But Macdonald's plan was faster and more aggressive, and would get it built quickly with no regard for anyone or anything in it's path. 

 

 The consolidation of the rest of the country was also part of this plan, but Macdonald wanted to make sure that Canada expanded in a way that kept it under the control of British elites, with voting rights restricted to land owners within the existing 'upper and lower' Canada while the rest of the country would be under Canada's control but not have voting rights.

 

As a result, Constitutional rights barely existed outside 'upper and lower' Canada, what is now known as Quebec and Ontario, but the laws, including the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly on trade and the powers of the highly militarized North West Mounted Police extended all the way to the Pacific, so the Federal government could do whatever it wanted in the west with no regard for the needs of the people there. 

 

 The founding of Manitoba as a province in Canada, with voting rights, etc., was forced on Macdonald by the Red River uprising led by Louis Riel in 1870, Madonald was determined to ensure that this didn't happen again, which was why the response to the Saskatchewan rebellion of 1885 was so militant. 

 

   The bidding wars for the railway were fierce, and ultimatly Sir Hugh Allan's Canada Pacific Railway Company came out ahead of it's competitors. 

 

 Then, it began to unravel. On April 2, 1873, Lucius Seth Huntington, a Liberal Member of Parliament Lucius Seth Huntington announced in the house that he had evidence showing that Hugh Allan had donated over $350,000 to the Conservative election fund. 

 

   Since election rules limited voting rights to people who owned a certain amount of property, and only within certain parts of the country, the vast majority of Canadians couldn't vote. 

 

   This made it possible to literally buy votes, especially in Canada's earliest elections, prior to the introduction of the secret ballot by the Liberals after MacDonald's resignation in 1973. 

 

 Macdonald's friendly contacts in US business and the Hudson's Bay Company, who greatly benefitted from the kinds of large, rigged contracts that only Macdonald could ensure them, quickly made things difficult for Canada's economy once Macdonald resigned.

 

 Macdonald also had many sympathetic friends in the 'National Party', the political wing of the 'Canada First' movement that preached a policy of exclusive Anglo-Saxon British immigration.

 

 While Macdonald worked to make sure the vote was kept mainly in British hands, he knew that major industrial projects at low cost, and high profits for his business partners, could not be done with properly paid British labourers. This was especially the case in the mountainous regions, where the construction companies knew that costs could only be kept down by having a total disregard for the lives of workers, something that British law made nearly impossible with British workers, but easier using Asian and to a lesser degree Eastern Europeans. 

 

   But National Party members in the house still saw Macdonald as their friend, his racial policies were still more restrictive than the French and Metis friendly Liberals, and they used every opportunity to attack the Liberal government for problems clearly resulting from Mcdonald's corruption. 

 

 Macdonald's business connections worked for his returned, and even with introduction of the secret ballot bribery was still impossible to prevent, especially with certain large, highly subsidized industrial interests able to strong arm voters with their potential to bring down the economy on a whim simply by cutting wages, and during elections openly threatened to do so if the Conservatives were removed. 

 

 So Macdonald was returned to office in 1878 and remained in office until 1891, despite widespread public opposition to almost everything he did. 

 

 

The Lost Testimony Of Louis Riel,  David Doyle, published by NorthWest Educational Productions, 2012. 

 

The National Dream/The Last Spike, 1970-1971 by Pierre Burton, Published as one volume in 1974 by McClelland & Stewart

 

The Canadian Encyclopedia, Canada First article