Founded 1847 (1847) Headquarters Montreal, Quebec | Preceded by Parti canadien | |
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Dissolved July 1, 1867 (1867-07-01) Merged into Liberal Party of Canada Ideology Radicalism
Anti-clericalism | ||
The Red Party (French: Parti rouge, or French: Parti démocratique) was formed in the Province of Quebec, around 1847 by radical French-Canadians inspired by the ideas of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the Institut canadien de Montréal, and the reformist movement led by the Parti patriote of the 1830s.
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History
The party was a successor to the Parti patriote. The reformist rouges did not believe that the 1840 Act of Union had truly granted a responsible government to former Upper and Lower Canada. They advocated important democratic reforms, republicanism, separation of the state and the church. They were perceived as anti-clerical and radical by their political adversaries. Some of its members desired the abolition of the semi-feudal seigneurial system of land ownership, although Papineau was himself a seigneur and a vocal defender of the traditional system, which he wanted reformed, not abolished.
They opposed the union of Upper Canada and Lower Canada into the United Province of Canada, and demanded its termination. When talks for Canadian confederation began, its members either opposed the idea, or suggested a decentralized confederation. They were opposed to the ultramontane politics of the Catholic clergy of Quebec and the Parti bleu.
In 1858, the elected rouges allied with the Clear Grits in the legislature of the united province of Canada. This resulted in the shortest-lived government in Canadian history, falling in less than a day. Not long after, the failure of most of the party's political actions caused its downfall and its more moderate members (notably including Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's first francophone Prime Minister) formed what became the Liberal Party of Canada in conjunction with their Upper Canadian Clear-Grit allies.