The Social Credit Party of Ontario (SCPO) (also known as the Ontario Social Credit League, Social Credit Association of Ontario and the Union of Electors) was a minor political party at the provincial level in the Canadian province of Ontario from the 1940s to the early 1980s. The party never won any seats in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It was affiliated with the Social Credit Party of Canada and espoused social credit theories of monetary reform.
1940s and 1950s and early 1960s Social Credit appears to have been inactive in Ontario until 1945 when eight candidates stood in the province for the federal party in the 1945 federal election. The Ontario Social Credit party ran three candidates in the 1945 provincial election.
In 1946, the Ontario Social Credit movement split as a result of Ernest Manning's growing hostility to Douglasites and antisemites in the movement.
The official Ontario Social Credit League was headed by John J. Fitzgerald and William Ovens. Ron Gostick, a far right propagandist, established the Union of Electors as a rival organization inspired by the more radical Quebec social credit organization, Union des electeurs led by Louis Even.
Like Even's group, the Union rejected the party system and ran not as a partisan political party but as a citizen's organization compelling their elected representatives to represent the will of the people. Like the Quebec-based Union, it also believed in a more orthodox application of social credit economic theory and was more openly antisemitic. In October 1947, the Ontario Social Credit League held an emergency convention which repudiated Gostick and the Union for infringing the League's rights.Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response by Janine Stingel page 154–155.
In the 1948 provincial election, the official Social Credit League ran no candidates but the Union of Electors ran fifteen candidates. The Ontario Union of Electors was accused by the Toronto Labour Council of "disseminating racial hatred in its crudest form.""Toronto Civic Jobs Closed To Some Races, TLC Told", Toronto Daily Star, September 16, 1949
Both parties then went dormant running no candidates in the 1951 or 1955 provincial elections, though Mel Rowat ran as an "Independent Social Credit" candidate in 1955 in Stormont.Toronto Daily Star (1900–1971); Toronto, Ontario. 01 Apr 1958: 8. The federal party continued to run candidates in Ontario during federal elections throughout the 1950s. In the 1959 provincial election the Social Credit party ran five candidates under the leadership of Edgar Shipley Birrell. Birrell, a Toronto furrier, Social Credit member since 1944, and Leaside town councillor from 1955 to 1960"Scarboro is most populous riding", Globe and Mail, June 13, 1962 had been elected party leader in February 1959, and stood as the party's candidate in York East"Candidates Who Will Contest Toronto and York Ridings on June 11", Globe and Mail, June 10, 1959 Birrell remained party leader until March 1962. Philip Kelly, a former minister of mines in the Ontario government of Leslie Frost, was elected the party's leader in March 1962 but quit several months later over a policy dispute."Ontario Socreds Pick Chief", Toronto Daily Star (1900–1971); Toronto, Ontario. 15 Oct 1963: 32.
1963 schism In 1963, the party split into two factions. "Social Credit Action" was established by Neil Carmichael, a stamp and coin dealer, who was chosen the group's leader,"Splinter Group Gives Top Spot To Carmichael", Globe and Mail, August 21, 1963 Carmichael's membership in the Ontario Social Credit Party had not been renewed after he made antisemitic statements."Nineteen Socreds Pick Three Metro Candidates", Toronto Daily Star, August 20, 1963 Other founders of the splinter group were James Audy, an accountant, who became party president, and David Hartman of Toronto. The group was formed when the official party refused to actively campaign in the 1963 provincial election.Globe and Mail, 23 September 1963, p.9. Audy had been the federal Social Credit Party's candidate in Spadina riding in the previous election.
Carmichael, 45, a five-time federal Socred candidate, had been the focus of controversy earlier that year when he was a federal Social Credit candidate in St. Paul's. He asserted at a public meeting that there was a Jewish conspiracy in which the Rothschilds were plotting to acquire all of Canada's mines through non-Jewish third party operatives, and that the family was part of an international Jewish conspiracy to take over all of Canada's businesses."Jews Have Designs on Mines: Carmichael", Globe and Mail, March 6, 1963 Carmichael was cautioned by the Social Credit Party of Ontario that he was "skating on thin ice" and would not be permitted to stand as a candidate again. His promise that a Social Credit government would pay each Canadian $5,000 worth of goods and services was derided by the Ontario party as "irresponsible"."Cautioned After Socred Inquiry", Globe and Mail, March 11, 1963 David Lewis of the New Democratic Party accused Social Credit of "harbouring anti-Semites" and stated that "Carmichael is only a symptom. The disease goes much deeper." Carmichael denied he was antisemitic, saying "I am not anti-Semitic.... I have many Jewish friends.... Many of my customers are Jewish." At a subsequent meeting, he said that his comments were "indiscreet", that had he known he was going to be quoted he would have "cloaked them in nice phrases", and accused the Jews of persecuting him for his remarks, blaming a reporter with a Jewish-sounding name for quoting him."Truth and Indiscretion", Globe and Mail, March 23, 1963 In the same meeting Carmichael declared that Adolf Hitler's economic system was "a very good and sound system of money" and that the Nazis "had it all figured out so that there was no unemployment." Carmichael's Social Credit membership was not renewed prior to his formation of Social Credit Action.
Social Credit Action supported Réal Caouette when he took his Ralliement des creditistes out of the Social Credit Party of Canada in September 1963, while the official party remained loyal to federal party leader Robert N. Thompson. Audy accused the Ontario Social Credit Association of being dominated by Protestant clergyman who were prejudiced against Caouette because he was a Catholic."Ontario Socreds Back Thompson", Globe and Mail, October 12, 1963 Richard Day, a spokesperson for the official Social Credit League of Ontario derided the views of Social Credit Action as being "anti-Semitic, economic trash and hypocritical"."Nominations split Social Crediters", Globe and Mail, August 30, 1963
Social Credit Action nominated six candidates in ridings in Toronto in the 1963 provincial election, while the official party, leaderless since the resignation of Philip Kelly the previous year, nominated only three candidates in rural ridings. The Social Credit Action candidates included Carmichael, Audy, Hartman and fascist John Ross Taylor. However, when it was reported that "the former leader of the Canadian Union of Fascists was running", the splinter group disassociated itself from Taylor on the eve of the election and he instead ran as a "Natural Order of Social Credit Organization" candidate."Now Socred Splinter Party is Splintered", Toronto Daily Star, September 25, 1963 Audy was announced by Caouette as his Ontario lieutenant but did not end up running in the 1965 federal election.
Subsequently, Carmichael was accused of allowing the Social Credit Action headquarters to become a meeting place and organizing centre for neo-Nazis disseminating antisemitic material, such as David Stanley and John Beattie.Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community by Frank Bialystock, page 124"15 named hate-mongers By Jewish Congress chief", Toronto Daily Star, April 10, 1964 Carmichael denied the charge saying "we feel the Jews are trying to stir up hate this way to sell their Israel bonds.""Deny hate-mongering charges", Toronto Daily Star, April 10, 1964 In October, the press reported that antisemitic leaflets were being distributed recruiting 14- to 21-year-olds to the right-wing "Canada Youth Corps" where they could be trained in explosives and weapons. The leaflets featured photographs of Carmichael and Stanley and promoted meetings at the Social Credit Action headquarters. Carmichael denied any knowledge of the leaflets or the Canada Youth Corps, and dissociated himself from Stanley."Rightist Sheet Seeks Youths for Training in Use of Weapons", Globe and Mail, December 21, 1964 Carmichael and Beattie clashed in the press in April 1965 after Beattie announced the formation of the Canadian Nazi Party announcing that he intended to recruit the "snivelling cowards" in Carmichael's Social Credit movement. Carmichael accused Beattie of trying to discredit his party."Nazis say they've been targets of taunts", Toronto Daily Star, April 22, 1965
By the 1967 provincial election, Social Credit Action had disappeared. The official Social Credit party had elected Wilmer F. Trefold as its new leader in October 1963, the month after the provincial election. In November 1966, Harvey Lainson was elected leader"Socreds plan to seek seats in Ontario vote", Toronto Daily Star (1900–1971); Toronto, Ontario. 18 Apr 1967: 4."Socreds to field 10-15 candidates", Toronto Daily Star (1900–1971); Toronto, Ontario. 20 Sep 1967: 3. and he led the party in the 1967 election, in which it ran seven candidates."366 hopefuls file papers for election", Globe and Mail, October 5, 1967.
Fascist takeover and split In the early 1970s, the radical Edmund Burke Society (EBS) infiltrated the party; Paul Fromm was elected as the party's president and other EBSers to the executive. In the 1971 provincial election, three of five Social Credit candidates running in the election were avowed "Burkers". The party had no identified leader, but Fromm acted as its media spokesman."Social Credit still backs Matrai and say the party will support him", Toronto Daily Star (1900-1971); Toronto, Ontario. 19 Oct 1971: 69. By 1972, the party had been taken over by the EBS which now called itself the Western Guard. As a result, the party was put under trusteeship at the instigation of the federal party which declared membership in the Western Guard to be "incompatible" with membership in Social Credit."Ontario Socreds may have violated bylaws", Globe and Mail, April 5, 1972Security Intelligence Review Committee, The Heritage Front Affair: Report to the Solicitor General of Canada, section 7.1, December 9, 1994.The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, The Heritage Front: Into the mainstream, 1994 The federal Social Credit Party disavowed the Social Credit Association of Ontario led by John Ross Taylor of the Western Guard and instead recognized the "Ontario Social Credit League", established in 1973 under the leadership of Bruce Arnold."Fallout shelters urged", Toronto Star, June 13, 1974