⚠️Fact Check: Canada’s Unity Crises Did Not Disappear Under Conservative Governments⚠️ (Coffee Read)

By Annie Koshy

Pierre told CP24 that Canada has never experienced a referendum crisis or a national unity crisis under Conservative governments.

This is not true.

Some of the most profound unity crises in Canadian history occurred under Conservative leadership. The Conscription Crisis during the First World War unfolded under Prime Minister Robert Borden.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s government presided over the execution of Louis Riel, a defining rupture in French English relations that still reverberates. Brian Mulroney’s tenure coincided with the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the rise of the Bloc Québécois, directly fueling the sovereignty movement that led to the 1995 Quebec referendum.

The Manitoba Schools Question unfolded under Conservative Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell in the 1890s.

It triggered a deep national crisis over language rights, religion, and provincial autonomy, pitting English Protestant Canada against French Catholic minorities and fracturing Confederation politics.

The Conscription Crisis of 1944, while less explosive than 1917, still generated serious national unity strain. Although the government at the time was Liberal, it is often incorrectly used to dilute the severity of the earlier Conservative-led conscription crisis under Borden, which remains one of the most destabilizing unity moments in Canadian history. Western alienation intensified during Progressive Conservative governments as well, particularly during Mulroney’s era, when constitutional negotiations focused heavily on Quebec, leaving parts of the West feeling politically sidelined. That alienation did not begin with Liberals and has never been confined to one party.

The rise of Reform and regional protest parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s occurred under a Conservative federal government and reflected serious national cohesion fractures along regional lines.

Taken together, the historical record shows that national unity crises are not partisan-proofed. They arise from constitutional stress, regional imbalance, language and cultural tensions, and economic shifts.

Conservative governments, like Liberal ones, have governed through those pressures rather than being immune to them. National unity crises are not partisan accidents. They emerge from structural tensions, constitutional strain, and historical context.

The comment was made during an interview with CP24 on January 30, 2026, in the context of the Conservative leadership review and broader national political discussion unfolding at the party’s convention in Calgary.