Confederation of Regions Party of Canada

The Confederation of Regions Party (CoR) was a right-wing federal political party in Canada founded in 1984 by Elmer Knutson. It was founded as a successor to the Western Canada Federation (West-Fed), a non-partisan organization, to fight the Liberal Party of Canada. The CoR aimed to fill the void on the right of the political spectrum left by the decline of the Social Credit Party of Canada and the growing unpopularity among westerners of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada under the leadership of Brian Mulroney.

The party also attracted significant support as a protest vote against official bilingualism among some voters who were not necessarily ideologically opposed to mainstream Canadian political parties on other issues. The party proposed dividing Canada into four 'regions', western Canada, Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Quebec, each with an equal number of seats in the House of Commons of Canada.^[1]

In the 1984 federal election, it nominated 55 candidates, who won 65,655 votes in total, or 0.52% of the popular vote across the country. The party took 2.2% of the vote in Alberta and peaked with 6.7% in Manitoba.

In the 1988 federal election, its 51 candidates won 41,342 votes, 0.31% of the popular vote. One of its candidates was Paul Fromm, leader of the far-right groups Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform and Canadian Association for Free Expression. (See also: Confederation of Regions Party candidates, 1988 Canadian federal election).

The party's greatest success came in New Brunswick, where its provincial wing, the New Brunswick Confederation of Regions Party, held the status of official opposition from 1991 to 1995. After the demise of CoR, many former supporters joined the Reform Party of Canada.