Reading an article about immigration, a hot topic these days, in my latest copy of Canada’s History, I was reminded of how much of our social progress Progressive Conservatives have been responsible for.

For example Ellen Fairclough, Prime Minute John Diefenbaker’s minister of immigration and citizenship, was responsible for removing the racial categories embedded in the Immigration Act. She began the process of taking geographic and racial restrictions out of our immigration policy and setting it on the path to the more objective instrument it is today.

Fairclough was one of Diefenbaker’s firsts, the first woman woman cabinet minister in our history. He also made the first Indigenous appointment to the Senate, and his PCs included the first Chinese-Canadian and Ukrainian-Canadian Members of Parliament. He was an early proponent of diversity.

He was in fact a paragon of civil liberties. In the words of Alberta MP Jack Bigg, Diefenbaker showed “by his whole life that he believes in the little man and the big rights of the little man.” In 1960 he introduced the Canadian Bill of Rights, the first federal law explicitly protecting our fundamental freedoms.

He sided with the non-white members of the Commonwealth in strongly opposing South African apartheid. His position was key to South Africa’s exit from the Commonwealth.

A later Progressive Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, also took a strong stand on South Africa. This took some courage because it meant opposing two giants of conservatism, the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Nonetheless, Mulroney was a leader in rallying Western nations against apartheid.

And South Africa didn’t forget. In 2015 the country awarded him its highest honour for foreign citizens, and when he died in 2024, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his sadness at the “passing of a leader who holds a special place in South Africa’s history.”

Mulroney has been called Canada’s “greenest prime minister” and deservedly so. He secured an acid rain treaty with the United States; sponsored the Montreal Protocol, perhaps the most successful international agreement on the environment; made Canada the first industrialized country to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity; created eight new national parks and brought in the Environmental Protection Act. And, oh yes, he strongly promoted action on global warming.

Provincial Progressive Conservatives have also been known to be strong environmentalists. Former Alberta Peter Lougheed, the province’s second best premier, respected the environment in ways small and large, from riding a bicycle to work at the legislature to implementing policies that protected the Eastern Slopes from coal mining. It’s hard to imagine the current premier doing either of these things.

Also unlike the current premier, he was a Canadian-firster and a strong believer in education. His government funded the creation of The Canadian Encyclopaedia and then donated a copy to every school and library in the country.

So what happened to those progressive conservatives? Alberta right-wing populists happened. The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada merged with Preston Manning’s Reform Party to become the Conservative Party of Canada. “Progressive” was notably omitted, in both name and practice.

Alberta and Saskatchewan Conservatives, too, have transformed into non-progressive parties. They, like their federal counterpart, seem more committed to the oil industry than to civil rights or the environment.

Nonetheless, there must be some of those old-fashioned progressive conservatives somewhere in the party ranks. Perhaps the recent floor-crossings are an indication they are starting to recognize that they are in the wrong party.