1921 Canadian federal election

The 1921 Canadian federal election was held on December 6, 1921, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 14th Parliament of Canada. The Union government that had governed Canada through the First World War was defeated, and replaced by a Liberal government under the young leader William Lyon Mackenzie King. A new party, the Progressive Party, won the second most seats in the election.

Background

Since the 1911 election, the country had been governed by the Conservatives, first under the leadership of Prime Minister Robert Borden and then under Prime Minister Arthur Meighen. During the First World War, the Conservatives had united with the pro-conscription Liberal-Unionists and formed a Union government. A number of Members of Parliament (MPs), mostly Quebecers, stayed loyal to Wilfrid Laurier (popularly known as the Laurier Liberals), however, and they maintained their independence. When Laurier died, he was succeeded as leader by Mackenzie King.

After the 1919 federal budget, a number of western Unionist MPs left the Union government in protest against high tariffs on farm products imposed by the budget. Led by Thomas Alexander Crerar, the group became known as the Progressive Party. Also running were a number of Labour advocates, foremost amongst them J. S. Woodsworth of Winnipeg, who had organized their political movement after the Winnipeg general strike of 1919. Meighen had played a key role in violently suppressing the strikers and this earned him the animosity of organized labour.

Meighen attempted to make the "Unionist" party a permanent alliance of Tories and Liberals by renaming it the National Liberal and Conservative Party, but the effort failed, and most Unionist Liberals either returned to the Liberal fold or joined the new Progressive Party. Besides the labour strife and farm tariffs in the Prairie provinces, the Conscription Crisis of 1917 had a lasting effect on Tory fortunes by making the party virtually unelectable in Quebec. The Unionist government's broken promise not to conscript workers needed on western Canadian farms also lost it support on the prairies.

Electoral system

Most of the MPs were elected in single-winner First past the post; Ottawa and Halifax were two-seat ridings with each voter able to cast up to two votes as per Plurality block voting.

National results

Note:

* not applicable - the party was not recognized in the previous election

* UFA candidates were sometimes referred to as Progressives, just as sometimes "Progressive" candidates running outside Alberta were referred to as UFA. All farmer/Progressive candidates running in Alberta were both UFA and Progressive, and sat as such in the House of Commons, at least until the UFA caucus became more independent. The vote shares of Progressive and UFA candidates shown above, if combined, are accurate for the two parties together as one.)

Vote and seat summaries

Results by province

Election aftermath

The Liberal Party took 41 percent of the vote. It won all of Quebec, much of the Maritime Provinces, and a good portion of Ontario.

The Progressive Party, including the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), won the second largest number of seats, dominating the Prairies, and winning almost a third of the seats in Ontario. Liberal and Conservative candidates were shut out in Alberta, with 10 UFA and two Labour candidates taking the province's 12 federal seats. The party won only one seat east of Ontario, however. Despite winning the second most seats, it declined to form the official opposition. It would be the only Canadian federal election before 1993 in which a party other than the Liberals or the Conservatives won the second-most seats.

The Unionists/Conservatives lost the most seats up to that time of any governing party at the federal level. They won fewer seats than the Progressives (despite winning more of the popular votes) but were named as the official opposition anyway. The Conservatives won much of the Ontario seats and had some support in the Maritimes and British Columbia but won no seats in the Prairies or in Quebec.

Three Labour MPs were elected: Independent Labour candidate J. S. Woodsworth won a Winnipeg seat largely due to his role in the 1919 Winnipeg general strike, and Labour Party candidates William Irvine and Joseph Tweed Shaw were elected in Calgary.

Majority or minority?

King's party won the most seats in the election but was still one seat short of a majority even if an Independent Liberal is counted as a Liberal.

Confusion between a majority and minority result may be caused by mislabelling of two Manitoba members as Liberals. Albert Blellock Hudson, a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister, was elected as an Independent Liberal (or Independent) over the official Liberal candidate, William Robert Hogarth. Arthur-Lucien Beaubien was elected in Provencher as a Progressive, defeating the sitting Liberal incumbent, John Patrick Molloy.

Later the Liberal Party lost two by-elections to Conservative candidates but later won a by-election in a seat that had been held by the Conservatives.

The Progressive caucus was less united than the Liberals or Conservatives, due to the formation of the Ginger Group, to which only some Progressives belonged, and the existence of the semi-autonomous United Farmers of Alberta group.

The Farmer MPs had promised among other things that they would reject the traditional Parliamentary traditions such as that of bending to the will of the party leader and whip. Many Progressives argued that an MP should be able to vote against the party line so long as the vote was in accordance to his constituents' wishes. As a result, King always found enough Progressive MPs who backed him on crucial votes. In the final session in 1925, 17 moderate Progressives consistently supported the Liberal government despite a caucus decision against them doing so.

There is no historical basis for the suggestion that in 1925 the government was brought down by an adverse vote due to a moment of confusion. This may itself result from confusion with the incident in the following Parliament (the 15th), when Arthur Meighen's government was defeated by one vote, becoming the first Canadian ministry to be defeated on a motion of non-confidence. In that vote, held on July 2, 1926, Rev. T. M. Bird (Progressive member for Nelson, Man.) stated he voted inadvertently, having been “paired” with another Progressive who was ill; if his vote had not been cast, the Meighen government would have likely survived on the vote of the Speaker breaking the tie.

See also

• List of Canadian federal general elections
• List of political parties in Canada
• 11th Canadian Parliament
• 14th Canadian Parliament

Notes

Further reading

• Messamore, Barbara J. (2025). Times of Transformation: The 1921 Canadian General Election. Vancouver: UBC Press. ISBN 978-0-774-87059-7.
• Hopkins, J. Castell (1922). . Toronto: The Annual Review Company.
• Canada, Chief Electoral Officer (1922). . Ottawa: King's Printer.