Provincial Rights Party

The Provincial Rights Party was a Canadian political party founded and led by Frederick W.A.G. Haultain in 1905 to contest elections in the new province of Saskatchewan.

Haultain had been Premier of the North-West Territories prior to the province's creation. He hoped to lead a government in the place of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party, which was backed by the federal government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. In the 1905 election, the Provincial Rights Party only won nine seats and 47% of the vote to the Liberal's 16 seats and 52%.

In the 1908 elections to an expanded 41 seat legislature, the Provincial Rights Party won 14 seats with 47% of the vote, losing again to the Liberals.

Haultain was appointed to the province's superior court by Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden in 1912, and the Provincial Rights Party became the Saskatchewan Conservative Party.

The Provincial Rights Party advocated greater provincial control over land, resources and development, and saw the Liberal Party as being too close to the Laurier federal government.

There was also an earlier Provincial Rights Party in Manitoba founded by Thomas Greenway in the 1882, which opposed the John Norquay government for being too close to Sir John A. Macdonald's Conservatives. This party called for greater provincial control over resources and the railway, and quickly developed into the Manitoba Liberal Party.

See also: Canadian political parties