Northern rights.(Other Countries)

Conservative Party of Canada, "Draft Policy Statement," February 4, 2004 (conservative.ca)

After almost a decade and a half in power in the 1980s and early 1990s, Canada's Progressive Conservative Party suffered a disastrous defeat in the 1993 elections. After their fall, the Canadian conservatives split into a Progressive Conservative remnant that had strength mostly in Ontario (Canada's economic engine and population center) and a western party, variously called the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance, which controlled provincial governments in the resource-rich West. After significant intra-party warfare, the two factions agreed on a merger and formed the Conservative Party of Canada earlier this year. A Liberal Party government, which holds near-absolute power in Canada's parliamentary system though it has never gotten a majority of the vote, currently controls the nation's levers of power. But a series of scandals and anger over high tax rates mean that Canadian conservatives may have a chance of taking control of the country's institutions when prime minister Paul Martin next calls elections.

The new Conservative Party's founding ...